Socioeconomic composition of low-acuity emergency department users in Ontario.

OBJECTIVE

To describe the associations between the socioeconomic status of emergency department (ED) users and age, sex, and acuity of medical conditions to better understand users' common characteristics, and to better meet primary and ambulatory health care needs.

DESIGN

A retrospective, observational, population-based analysis. A rigorous proxy of socioeconomic status was applied using census-based methods to calculate a relative deprivation index.

SETTING

Ontario.

PARTICIPANTS

All Ontario ED visits for the fiscal year April 1, 2008, to March 31, 2009, from the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System data set.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Emergency department visits were ranked into deprivation quintiles, and associations between deprivation and age, sex, acuity at triage, and association with a primary care physician were investigated.

RESULTS

More than 25% of ED visits in Ontario were from the most deprived population; almost half of those (12.3%) were for conditions of low acuity. Age profiles indicated that a large contribution to low-acuity ED visits was made by young adults (aged 20 to 30 years) from the most deprived population. For the highest-volume ED in Ontario, 94 of the 499 ED visits per day were for low-acuity patients from the most deprived population. Most of the highest volume EDs in Ontario (more than 200 ED visits per day) follow this trend.

CONCLUSION

Overall input into EDs might be reduced by providing accessible and appropriate primary health care resources in catchment areas of EDs with high rates of low-acuity ED visits, particularly for young adults from the most deprived segment of the population.