PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Louise Powter
AU  - Amanda Beale
AU  - Benjamin Probert
AU  - Ashwin Dhanda
TI  - Development and validation of a tool to select patients for admission to medical short stay units
AID  - 10.7861/clinmedicine.14-4-371
DP  - 2014 Aug 01
TA  - Clinical Medicine
PG  - 371--375
VI  - 14
IP  - 4
4099  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/14/4/371.short
4100  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/14/4/371.full
SO  - Clin Med2014 Aug 01; 14
AB  - Medical short stay units help to increase patient flow and decrease length of stay, but selecting appropriate patients for admission to such units is difficult. The selection tool used in our unit was effective but cumbersome to apply. We collected prospective data on 297 unselected emergency medical admissions and developed a new scoring system based on four key variables using regression analysis. The model predicted a length of stay of <72 h with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.68. The model was then used to select patients for admission to the short stay unit in our trust. Length of stay on the short stay unit had decreased by an average of 2.73 days with our original selection tool, but remained unchanged at an average of 3.02 days using the new simpler tool (p > 0.05). This model could now be adopted by other units.