ReviewInternal and emergency medicine2023
Emergency department crowding: an overview of reviews describing measures causes, and harms.
Review in Internal and emergency medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 85 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
85 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Outcome metrics in recommended performance measurement tools for emergency department performance evaluation: a systematic review.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Patient flow in emergency departments: a comprehensive umbrella review of solutions and challenges across the health system.BMC health services research · 2024Pooled it
- Prospective blinded interim evaluation of a portable radiofrequency device TES HT to support triage in emergency department patients with mild head trauma or acute neurological symptoms.BMC emergency medicine · 2026Trial
- Trial
- Shift-Specific Patterns of Nursing Workloads in the Emergency Department: AI Powered Analysis.Journal of advanced nursing · 2026Observational
- Agreement and Classification Performance of a Mobile Self-Triage Application Based on the Manchester Triage System in Hemodynamically Stable Adult Walk-In Emergency Department Patients: A Prospective Observational Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Article
- Barriers to Protocol Adherence in Emergency Departments and Evidence-Based Strategies for Successful Implementation: A Scoping Review.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- Article
- Where's the way out? Access block, boarding and hospital overcrowding: a narrative review.Internal and emergency medicine · 2026Review
- Descriptive Analysis of the First 12-Month Activity of Docadom, a Private Physician-Led Urgent In-Home Consultation Service.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Experiences and Perceptions of Patient Watch, a Rural Telehealth Case Management Model, for Frequent Presenters to the Emergency Department: A Longitudinal Mixed Methods Study.The Australian journal of rural health · 2026Article
- Cardio-respiratory deep learning model to predict hospital admission from emergency department electrocardiogram images and respiration videos: a prospective study.BioData mining · 2026Article
- Article
- Impact of hospital restructuring on emergency department quality: a natural experiment.Internal and emergency medicine · 2026Article
- The AI implementation gap in trauma radiography: standalone versus discretionary AI-integrated fracture detection.European radiology experimental · 2026Article
- Review
- Criminalizing Serious Mental Illness: What Linked Urban Data Reveal and the Case for Community Care.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2026Article
- Assessment of Sydney Triage to Admission Risk Tool (START) on Egyptian Emergency Department performance.African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence · 2026Article
- Reducing Mis-triage in Emergency Departments (RemEDy): Protocol for Improving Triage Accuracy Through Real-time Evaluation and Artificial Intelligence.JMIR research protocols · 2026Article
25 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Crowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) has emerged as a global public health crisis. Current literature has identified causes and the potential harms of crowding in recent years. The way crowding is measured has also been the source of emerging literature and debate. We aimed to synthesize the current literature of the causes, harms, and measures of crowding in emergency departments around the world. The review is guided by the current PRIOR statement, and involved Pubmed, Medline, and Embase searches for eligible systematic reviews. A risk of bias and quality assessment were performed for each review, and the results were synthesized into a narrative overview. A total of 13 systematic reviews were identified, each targeting the measures, causes, and harms of crowding in global emergency departments. Key among the results is that the measures of crowding were heterogeneous, even in geographically proximate areas, and that temporal measures are being utilized more frequently. It was identified that many measures are associated with crowding, and the literature would benefit from standardization of these metrics to promote improvement efforts and the generalization of research conclusions. The major causes of crowding were grouped into patient, staff, and system-level factors; with the most important factor identified as outpatient boarding. The harms of crowding, impacting patients, healthcare staff, and healthcare spending, highlight the importance of addressing crowding. This overview was intended to synthesize the current literature on crowding for relevant stakeholders, to assist with advocacy and solution-based decision making.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.