Impact of a Regional Acute Care Surgery Model on Patient Access and Outcomes

Background: The consolidation of acute care surgery (ACS) services at 3 of 6 hospitals in a Canadian health region sought to alleviate a relative shortage of surgeons able to take emergency call. We examined how this affected patient access and outcomes.

Methods: Using the generalized linear model and statistical process control, we analyzed ACS-related episodes that occurred between 39 months prior to and 17 months after the model's implementation (n = 14,713).

Results: Time to surgery increased after the consolidation. Wait times increased primarily for patients presenting at nonreferral hospitals who were likely to require transfer to a referral hospital. Although ACS teams enabled referral hospitals to handle a much higher volume of patients without increasing within-hospital wait times, overall system wait times were lengthened by the growing frequency of patient transfers. Wait times for inpatient admission were difficult to interpret because there was a trend toward admitting patients directly to the ACS service, bypassing the emergency department (ED). For patients who did go through the ED, wait times for inpatient admission increased after the consolidation; however, this trend was cancelled out by the apparently zero waits of patients who bypassed the ED. Regionalization showed no impact on length of stay, readmissions, mortality or complications.

Conclusion: Consolidation enabled the region to ensure adequate surgical coverage without harming patients. The need to transfer patients who presented at nonreferral hospitals led to longer waits.