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Abstract Background The Acute Medical Unit (AMU) forms part of our institution's acute medical pathways. Through the Senior Intervention Flow Triage system in our Emergency Department (ED), medically stable patients likely to complete investigations and treatment within 48 to 72 hours are referred to the AMU for management. Acute medicine geriatricians cover three out of five days in the AMU. This paper aims to study the characteristics and outcomes of patients referred to our AMU. Methods Our institution’s innovation and research office approved the study, ref: 8731, on 24/01/2024. Medical notes from patients who attended the AMU from 11 December 2023 to 30 January 2024 were examined. Collected data included demographics, presenting complaints, admissions avoided and converts. Patients were divided into age groups: ≤64, 65-74, and ≥75. Admission avoidance is any intervention by the AMU that results in the patient's discharge. A convert is an on-call team medically admitted patient in the ED who was taken over and successfully discharged by the AMU with appropriate follow-up. Results 345 patients attended AMU over the six-week period. Of those, 217 (62.9%) were ≤64, 65 (18.8%) were 65-74, and 63 (18.3%) were ≥75 years old. More than 50% of the patients were female in each age group. The ≤ 64 years group had the highest admission avoidance, 72%, followed closely by the ≥ 75 years group, 65% and the 65-74 years group, 57%. The ≥ 75 years group had the highest rate of converts at 11%, followed by the ≤ 64 years group at 10% and the 65-74 years group at 6%. There were similar admission rates across the 3 age groups of 7 to 8%. Conclusion This study found that the ≥ 75-year-old group was not inferior to other groups regarding admission rates and avoided hospital admissions.
Hassan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.