Service Agreement - Department of Health Tasmania: 2018, Emergency Department - Total time (hours) spent by ambulance presentations in offload delay, 2018
Identifying and definitional attributes | |
Metadata item type: | Indicator |
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| Indicator type: | Indicator |
| Short name: | Ambulance offload delay (hours) |
| Synonymous names: | Ambulance offload delay; Ambulance ramping |
| METEOR identifier: | 698666 |
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| Description: | This indicator measures the amount of time, in hours, that ambulance presentation to an emergency department resulted in offload delay (delay from triage time to handover time of more than 15 minutes and 30 minutes). Ambulance offload delay is measured from when triage occurred while the care of the patient was still under the responsibility of ambulance officers until the care was fully transferred to the emergency department. |
| Rationale: | The Emergency Care Network Steering Committee and the Tasmanian Ambulance Service set the benchmark of 15 minutes and 30 minutes for a safe and timely transfer of a patient from the care of ambulance crew to emergency department staff. A patient is considered to have Ambulance Offload Delay (AOD) when they are still under the care of ambulance crew 15 minutes and 30 minutes after their arrival to the emergency department. The amount of time spent AOD is set to zero at the 15 minutes and 30 minutes mark. |
| Indicator set: | Service Plan - Department of Health Tasmania: 2018 Tasmanian Health, Superseded 24/07/2019 |
| Outcome area: | Emergency Department access Tasmanian Health, Standard 07/12/2016 |
Collection and usage attributes | |
| Computation: | The definitions applied were set by the Emergency Care Network Steering Committee. The definitions include presentations that have been assigned a triage category between 1 and 5. Presentations that are 'dead on arrival' are excluded for the purpose of calculating this indicator. Ambulance offload delay is calculated for ambulance presentations by subtracting the date and time the patient was triaged from the date and time the patient was transferred to the care of the emergency department. Ambulance offload delay has occurred when this figure is greater than 15 minutes (being 15:59) or 30 minutes (being 30:59). The amount of ambulance offload delay time is set to zero at the 15 minute mark; consequently a patient who waited for 20 minutes would have an ambulance offload delay time of 5 minutes. The amount of ambulance offload delay time is set to zero at the 30 minute mark; consequently a patient who waited for 35 minutes would have an ambulance offload delay time of 5 minutes. See Australasian Triage Scale from the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine for a description of each triage category, including indicative clinical descriptors. The indicator is presented as total time, in hours. |
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| Numerator: | Total time of ambulance presentations with delay from triage to handover time greater than 15 minutes and 30 minutes, converted into hours |
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| Denominator: | No denominator |
| Disaggregation: | Specified disaggregation: Hospital, triage category and reporting month based on the date of the end of the emergency department stay |
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Representational attributes | |
| Representation class: | Count |
| Data type: | Real |
| Unit of measure: | Time (e.g. days, hours) |
| Format: | NNN[N] |
Accountability attributes | |
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