Etiology of emergency department overcrowding: descriptive analytics of inappropriate accesses at Salerno hospital in Italy

Emergency Department (ED) overcrowding is a worldwide problem (Morley et al. 2018). Always, people who present to EDs are required to wait too much. This problem compromises the health management efficacy, the satisfaction of the patients, the quality of the public offered service, also impacting on the indicators of the quality of life. The reasons are different, and there is no all-inclusive solution. This research work is aimed to study the etiology of this problem, providing some evidence useful to support the health management board and to increase the awareness of the citizens. The main contribution is about the analysis of access to an Italian hospital during a timespan of one year. The paper shows the results of descriptive analytics by pointing out some aspects that may mitigate the problem of EDs overcrowding. Among others, one of the most important outcomes of this study is about the rate of appropriateness and inappropriateness of the accesses to the ED, where the meaning of inappropriate access is essentially a situation tractable outside the ED. These results could increase awareness, emphasizing the impact of the number of improper accesses.