Objectives: To determine whether a new triage system safely diverts a proportion of emergency department (ED) patients to a general practitioner cooperative (GPC).
Methods: Unblinded randomised controlled trial with weekends serving as clusters (three intervention clusters for each control). The intervention was triage by a nurse using a new extension to the Manchester Triage System assigning low-risk patients to the GPC. During intervention weekends, patients were encouraged to follow this assignment; it was not communicated during control weekends (all patients remained at the ED). The primary outcome was the proportion of patients assigned to and handled by the GPC during intervention weekends. The trial was randomised for the secondary outcome: the proportion of patients assigned to the GPC. Additional outcomes were association of these outcomes with possible confounders (study tool parameters, nurse, and patient characteristics), proportion of patients referred back to the ED by the GPC, hospitalisations, and performance of the study tool to detect primary care patients (the opinion of the treating physician was the gold standard).
Results: In the intervention group, 838/6294 patients (13.3%, 95% CI 12.5 to 14.2) were assigned to the GPC, in the control group this was 431/1744 (24.7%, 95% CI 22.7 to 26.8). In total, 599/6294 patients (9.5%, 95% CI 8.8 to 10.3) experienced the primary outcome which was influenced by the reason for encounter, age, and the nurse. 24/599 patients (4.0%, 95% CI 2.7 to 5.9) were referred back to the ED, three were hospitalised. Positive and negative predictive values of the studied tool during intervention weekends were 0.96 (95%CI 0.94 to 0.97) and 0.60 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.62). Out of the patients assigned to the GPC, 2.4% (95% CI 1.7 to 3.4) were hospitalised.
Conclusions: ED nurses using a new tool safely diverted 9.5% of the included patients to primary care.
Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03793972.