Observational studyAcademic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine2025
Reduced left-without-being-seen rates and impact on disparities after guest services ambassadors implementation.
Observational study in Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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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
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Peer Support Workers to Improve Emergency Department Care Completion Among Patients Who Use Substances: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2026Article
- When Metrics Replace Values: Ethical Concerns in Healthcare Performance Measures.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2026Article
- Left Without Being Seen: A Scoping Review of a Silent Crisis in Emergency Departments.Open access emergency medicine : OAEM · 2026Review
- Reduced left-without-being-seen rates and impact on disparities after guest services ambassadors implementation.Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine · 2025Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe rate of patients who leave without being seen (LWBS) from an emergency department (ED) is a common measurement of quality, operational efficiency, and patient satisfaction. We hypothesized that adding a nonclinical staff role, guest service ambassadors (GSA), to the ED waiting room would decrease LWBS rates and reduce existing differences by race, ethnicity, sex, and primary language for ED patients.
methodsWe conducted an observational cohort study at a quaternary care academic ED in the Midwestern United States with approximately 60,000 annual visits between April and December 2022. GSAs were trained to guide patients and visitors through the check-in process and help manage the waiting room. LWBS rates were compared between pre- and postimplementation periods using logistic regression. Using two-sample proportion tests, subgroup analyses were performed to assess differences according to race, ethnicity, sex, and primary language.
resultsWe analyzed 50,507 ED visits including 9798 during periods of GSA coverage. GSA presence was associated with a reduction in LWBS rate from 3.4% to 2.0% (absolute risk reduction [ARR] of 1.4%, χ
conclusionsAlthough some disparities remain, our study suggests that GSAs may provide an effective strategy to reduce the overall LWBS rate and reduce disparities across diverse demographic groups including BIPOC and female patients.
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