An epidemiological study of a patient population, triage category allocations and principal diagnosis within the emergency centres of a private healthcare group in the Emirate of Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The study used retrospective medical records, and some records were missing: 2,602 triage category allocations (4.57%), 2,001 principal diagnoses (3.51%) and 9 gender entries (<0.16%). The four emergency centres used different triage systems, so the study could compare only the distribution of the five allocated categories, not the clinical meaning of each category. Principal diagnosis names were recorded according to individual physician preference, so similar conditions may have been split across different names or grouped differently. The analysis of variance treated triage category allocation as a distribution pattern rather than a ranked acuity scale, because the categories have an ordered meaning. One emergency centre did not correlate with the others, and the study could not determine whether this was due to the triage system, patient population or triage operators. Private emergency centres in this setting could not see major trauma cases, so the low proportion of high-acuity cases may not apply to emergency centres that handle trauma. There were no data available to compare acuity levels with other private hospital groups in the United Arab Emirates.

The paper reports that the study was conducted in the emergency centres of Mediclinic Middle East, which highlighted triage as a vital component of their business model.

Do not conclude that the four emergency centres applied the same triage process or that the triage categories mean the same thing clinically. The centres used different triage systems, and the study compared only the distribution of allocated categories, not their clinical content.