Les passages non justifiés au service d’accueil urgencesProposition d’une offre de soins différenciée

OBJECTIVE: The number of visits to emergency units in public hospital settings in France increases every year. The adequation between admission to an SAU--Service d\u0027accueil d\u0027urgence (emergency unit) and the clinical status of the patient must be checked to improve handling upstream of the SAU. METHOD: A prospective study was conducted in the SAU of the University Hospital in Nantes to assess the proportion of patients who would benefit from direct hospitalisation, scheduled in a department of specialised or polyvalent medicine. RESULTS: This proportion was of 10%. Seventy-three percent of the patients were aged over 60. They were referred in 77% of cases by their treating physician and in 10.4% of cases by the physician on duty. Thirty-three percent of cases were non-specified organ diseases, 20% were dermatological affections, 12% broncho-pulmonary infections and in the same proportion rheumatological pathologies; other affections were rare. COMMENTS: The results of this study must be confirmed in a pilot study in which the general practitioner would refer any patient, that he would have sent to an SAU, directly to a medical department without passing through the SAU. To do so, using a cell phone, the practitioner would contact the hospital physician who would find a hospital bed. The impact of this new modality of hospitalisation on the SAU could be assessed in terms of the number of admissions avoided to the SAU.