Effect of Emergency Department Crowding on the Number of Radiology Examinations

Objective: To reveal the relationship between the increase in the number of patient admission to the emergency department and the number of radiological examinations requested from emergency department. Methods: In this study, we obtained the annual number of admissions to the emergency department between 2013 and 2017 in 2 different hospitals in Erzincan province. We obtained also the number of ultrasonography, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging examinations requested in the emergency and non-emergency departments and performed the basic statistical analysis. Results: While the annual number of patients admitted to emergency department was 209 814 in 2013, this number increased to 288 595 in 2017, which means an increase of approximately 38% in the number of emergency department patients between 2013 and 2017. There had always been an increase in the number of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging examinations in emergency department over the years between 2013 and 2017 without any decrease. The number of computed tomography utilization increased from 10 699 in 2013 to 22 510 in 2017, which means a proportional increase of 110%. The number of magnetic resonance imaging utilization increased from 113 in 2013 to 1478 in 2017, with a proportional increase of 1220%. The number of ultrasonography utilization in emergency department increased from 593 in 2013 to 867 in 2017, with a proportional increase of 46%. However, the number of ultrasonography examinations in emergency department had been decreasing regularly since 2014. Conclusion: The rate of increase in radiology examinations performed in the emergency department is higher than the rate of increase in the number of admissions to the emergency department. In this sense, an increase in the number of physicians in emergency department and an improvement in examination times per patient can reduce and optimize the number of radiology examinations requested from emergency departments.