Improving quality of services in maternity care triage system

• Autor(a) principal: Abelha, António
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: Pereira, Eliana, Brandão, Andreia, Portela, Filipe, Santos, Manuel Filipe, Machado, José Manuel, Braga, Jorge
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/36592
• topic: Triage; Emergency Department; Intelligent Decision Support System; Manchester Triage System; Triage System Gynecology Obstetrics; Real Time Decision Support; Science & Technology

The main objectives in hospital triages are to improve the quality of care and reduce the risks associated to the waiting time in emergency care. Thus, an efficient triage is a good way to avoid some future problems and how much quicker it is, more the patient can benefit. The most common triage system is the Manchester Triage System (MTS). MTS is a reliable system focused in the hospital emergency department. However, its use is more suitable for more widespread medical emergencies and not for specialized cases as is Maternity Care and Gynecological and Obstetrics emergencies. To overcome these limitations an alternative pre-triage system, integrated into an intelligent decision support system, was developed in order to better characterize the patient and correctly defined the patient as urgent or not. This system allows increasing patient’s safety, especially women who need immediate care. This paper presents the main results and the workflow describing the decision process in real time in the emergency department, when the women are submitted to the triage process and they are identified possible evolution points of this system.