Introduction In the context of hospital bed planning, the focus is usually placed on the management
of surgical planning. The emergency care to be provided, on the other hand, is often
given secondary consideration. The volume, distribution and occupancy of emergency
patients should be investigated as part of the planning of the new ENT clinic.
Material and methods Emergency patients who were treated in our clinic from Q3 2020 onwards were recorded
in a separate calendar at specific times. This calendar was evaluated with regard
to the number of patients and time of consultation. In addition, the calendar entry
was linked to the associated case (inpatient/outpatient) to identify whether the respective
emergency patient was treated as an outpatient or inpatient.
Results A period of 11 quarters was analyzed. There was an average of 1550 emergency treatments
per quarter. An average of 20.0 (‡6.7) emergency patients were treated per day, with
67.4% of these patients being treated outside normal working hours. 10% of emergency
patients required inpatient treatment and accounted for 24% of all inpatients. 75%
of emergency inpatients were treated conservatively.
Discussion The average presentation of 13 patients per day in the service only 10% were admitted
as inpatients. This shows an increasing utilization of hospital outpatient departments
by minor cases. A relevant proportion of inpatient cases (24%) result from emergency
care. Emergency care therefore has a considerable influence on the planning of outpatient
and inpatient resources and must therefore be taken into account in particular when
planning operations and beds.
