Appropriateness of emergency hospital admissions

The aim of this work is to know the proportion of inadequate urgent admissions in a general hospital. A retrospective and descriptive study of patients admitted during 1,999 was performed. The Appropriatness Evaluation Protocol (AEP) was used in order to evaluate the appropriatness of the admissions. Eighteen admissions (4.5%) were inadecuated. There was a higher proportion of inappropriate admission (IA) when the physician responsible of the admission was a medical specialist (internal medicine, hematology or nephrology): odds ratio 5.3 in opposite to emergency physicians (p < 0.03). There was a low proportion of inadequate admissions (4.5%) and the risk of inappropriatness of the admission was major when it was ordered by a medical specialist.