ArticleCJEM2025
Disparities in emergency department boarding: contrasting mental health and non-mental health patients.
Article in CJEM, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 2 papers.
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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Psychiatric Observability Under Operational Strain in Emergency Mental Health Care.Journal of clinical nursing · 2026Article
- Nurses' Experiences Caring for People Presenting to the Emergency Department With Mental Health Concerns.Journal of clinical nursing · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesEmergency department (ED) boarding is a major threat to timely and safe care delivery. Addressing boarding requires an understanding of which patient populations are significantly impacted to formulate solutions. Our objective was to evaluate the median ED boarding time of mental health compared to non-mental health patients.
methodsWe performed a database analysis using the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System data from 96 EDs from September 1, 2018, to September 30, 2023. International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision codes were used to define mental health and non-mental health subgroups for all patients admitted from the ED who were greater than 18 years old. Boarding was defined as the elapsed time between the admission decision to when patients departed the ED. Descriptive statistics summarized ED visit characteristics and median (IQR) boarding time throughout three study periods. An interrupted time series analysis evaluated boarding trends to account for COVID-19 variation.
resultsDuring the study period, 887,494 patients were admitted from an ED with mental health (113,209; 13%) or non-mental health (774,285; 87%) diagnoses. The mental health subgroup was younger, with a median age of 40, and predominantly male (57.1%). The median (IQR) boarding time for mental health patients was 120% longer (282 min (79-1113)) compared to non-mental health (128 min (58-420)). When comparing the initial and final study periods, mental health patient boarding increased by 76% (199 min), and non-mental health patient boarding increased by 24% (29 min).
conclusionThis is the most extensive Canadian study comparing ED boarding for mental health and non-mental patients. The results demonstrate that mental health patients experience disproportionately longer ED boarding compared to other patient presentations, and the trend remains consistent over time. This emphasizes the need to address inequities in resourcing inpatient beds and adjust the current care model for mental health patients.
Indexed as
Identifiers
39937334What OpenQuestion holds
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.