Canadian Emergency DepartmentTriage and Acuity Scale: implementation in a tertiary care center in Saudi Arabia

A total of 1206 charts were randomly selected and retrospectively reviewed for triage performance. The indicators were: time to triage, triage duration, waiting time to be evaluated by a physician, and proportion of patients who left without being seen by a physician. Waiting times were stratified by triage level and reported as fractile response rates.The approximate time to triage was ≤ 10 minutes for 71% and ≤ 15 minutes for 82.8% of the patients. Fifty-three percent (53.5%) completed their triage process within 5 minutes. Waiting times evaluated by a physician was 100% within CTAS time objectives in category I patients, however, this was not the case for the other 4 categories. The overall left without being seen (LWBS) rate was 9.8%; 11.9% were in Level III, 20.3% in Level IV, and 67.8% in Level V. Median length of stay (LOS) was 144 minutes for the study sample as a whole.The CTAS may be adapted, with achievable objectives, in hospitals outside Canada as well. Time to see physician, total LOS, and LWBS are effective markers of ED performance and the quality of triage. Registration-to-physician time (RTP) and LOS profiles, stratified by triage level, are essential indicative markers for ED performance and should be used in improving patients flow through collaborative efforts.Emergency care is typically sought for serious injuries and acute medical conditions (i.e. heart attack or stroke), however, excessive delays and overcrowding of emergency departments (EDs) have become serious problems, thus, causing concern with regards to compromise in care. Accordingly, longer waiting times in the ED not only contribute to patients' dissatisfaction with the care received [1], but may also result in delays in diagnosis and treatment [2,3], as well as, chronic pain and suffering. In addition, a large segment of patients bombard the ED with lesser acute complaints, sometimes preoccupying medical staff time and resources, and delaying the management of more acutely ill pati