Triage - hälsoekonomi
resursallokering och kostnadsberäkning för olika proriteringsnivåer inom akutsjukvård
TriageResursallokeringAkutsjukvårdAkutmottagningPrioriteringPrioriteringsnivåHälsoekonomiKostnadsberäkningKostnadsnivå
When a person arrives at the emergency ward at the Uppsala University Hospital with his or her symptoms he or she explains the problems and then a priority process starts. The staff evaluate at which emergency level the patient is located in a model called Triage. The Triage model helps to decide the priority need and is based upon templates which point out in which of the 5 categories a patient is to be placed, to eliminate any future risk regarding his or her health. A lower triage level means lower priority but implies better health when the evaluation takes place. To obtain optimal effect of the Triage model the evaluation of symptoms must be reproducible so that patients with the same symptoms are placed at the same triage level regardless of whom among the staff conducts the evaluation.
The purpose of the study was to see if the resources are allocated based on priority level of the patients. In this study the cost levels were calculated for the 5 triage levels within the 5 different cost categories: staff, material, medicine, x-ray and laboratory. The investigation has focused on these variable costs in two studies, one focusing on time and the other on charts. A tool that can be used to evaluate health and show how to allocate resources is Health Economics which I used.
The results were calculated for the 5 different cost categories and then the total variable costs were calculated for all triage levels. The need of resources can be equalized with the cost level since a high demand of resources gives a high cost. The result shows that the highest level of priority has the highest cost level, which was expected, but the lowest cost level is found in the middle of the triage scale. If the resources were allocated based on the patients? needs, the total health level for all patients would improve in the long run. If priority corresponds to the need of resources cannot be seen in the spread of costs between the triage levels in this study.