The following is a summary of “Correlations among common emergency medicine physician performance measures: Mixed messages or balancing forces?” published in the October 2023  issue of Emergency Medicine by Scofi, et al.

The growing complexity of ED physician performance metrics has led to several serious issues, including the development of redundant and contradictory metrics that must consider various ED situations. To describe the links between the variables and determine whether there are any variations between academic and non-academic ED contexts, researchers studied correlations between the two types of settings using a cross-sectional design. 

Pearson correlations were computed for 12 variables involving 220 emergency department doctors working in 11 emergency departments. There was a significant relationship between a greater admission rate and a higher CT use rate (R = 0.7, p<0.01) as well as a longer room-to-discharge time (R = 0.7, p<0.01). There was a significant negative correlation between the number of patients seen each hour and the time spent waiting in the room to see a doctor (R = -0.7, p<0.01). 

When compared to settings that were not academic, the relationships between the measures were shown to be stronger in academic settings. There may be possibilities to lessen conflicting performance expectations placed on physicians due to strong correlations amongst ED metrics. The fact that correlations in academic and non-academic contexts are different suggests that it may not be suitable to apply the same performance criteria to both types of settings.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S073567572300373X