Abstract

Aim: The classification system in emergency rooms was implemented in all the emergency services of the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social around 2015, despite the fact that its usefulness and veracity have been questioned. The present study aimed to establish changes in the number of deaths and in mortality with the implementation of the Canadian Triage and Severity Scale.

Methods: The records corresponding to the attentions of the Emergency Service from 2008 to 2022 were obtained and comparisons were made of the records before and after the implementation of the Canadian Triage and Severity Scale in March 2015. In total, the data referring to 1,351,091 consultations were taken into account, of which 733,318 occurred before the implementation of the scale. Both populations were compared with respect to temporal trends in deaths, stays in the service before death, mortality, and the relationship between deaths and monthly patient-hours.

Results: A significant increase in deaths was found after the implementation of the Canadian Triage and Severity Scale by 19.8% (p<0.001). Mortality showed a continuous increase since 2012, however a normalization of the number of visits allowed us to observe an increase in mortality after but not before the implementation of the scale (p<0.02). The number of monthly deaths has not been shown to be related to the amount of monthly consults or monthly patient-hours.

Conclusions: The implementation of the Canadian Triage and Severity Scale in the emergency room of a third level hospital in Costa Rica was related in the present study to an increase in deaths, without being related to indicators of service plethora.

Keywords: Classification; Emergencies; Mortality; Deaths