Info-graph for analysis of semi-urgent & non-urgent triage visits in Alberta Hospitals.
The aim of this project was to analyze Alberta Health's data pertaining to health service utilization. The specific data set used for this visualization was "Common Emergency Visits by Triage Levels (Percentage)" on the Government of Alberta webpage. The stakeholders were most interested in understanding the trend of percentage of triage level 4 (semi-urgent) and triage level 5 (non-urgent) over time and across geographical zones.
The first bar plot shows changes in the percentage of semi-urgent and non-urgent triage levels over time. We see a gradual decrease in both semi-urgent (6% decline) and non-urgent triage (3% decline) in hospital visitations over time from 2015 to 2019. In the latest year that data was available (2019) the overall percentage of semi-urgent hospital visitations was 36% compared to non-urgent triage visitations at 5% thus indicating that the number of visitations for semi-urgent triage is substantial higher than non-urgent triage and accounts for almost half the number of hospital visitations.
From the donut charts, we also see that the North zone accounts for the largest percentage of both semi-urgent triage visitations levels (31%) and non-urgent triage visitation levels (40%). This is followed closely by Calgary zone (27% semi-urgent triage visitations and 19.6% non-urgent triage visitations). Central zone, Edmonton zone and South zone follow Calgary zone, in decreasing order. Therefore, we can see that with the high number of semi-urgent and non-urgent triage visitations in the North zone, resources could be allocated accordingly in order to ensure the health system in these zones are not over-burdened.
In order to better understand the conditions that required the most frequent visitations, the bar plots show that the highest frequency of semi-urgent visits was acute upper respiratory infections (600,000 visits in 2019) followed by infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (about 300,000 visits). Acute upper respiratory infections was also the condition responsible for the highest number of non-urgent triage visitations (100,000 visits) again followed by infections of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (60,000 visits). These are the ailments that are causing a burgeoning effect on the health care system and improvement may include having more respiratory clinics in Alberta to allow more outsourcing of these conditions so as to alleviate the strain on the hospitals and hence the overall healthcare system. This would also permit for better care for patients with these ailments and a decrease in waiting times at Alberta hospitals. These insights are also instrumental in resource allocation in terms of equipment and tools invested in by the government in order to better accommodate patients.
Lastly, from the radar graphs, we see quite a bit of variation in the age and sex of patients that visit the semi-urgent and non-urgent triage in Alberta. We see that overall, females have more hospitalizations visits for both semi-urgent triage and non-urgent triage in Alberta and this disparity is even more prominent for the semi-urgent triage levels for the age groups, 15-29, 30-49 and 50-74. We see this disparity narrow down for individuals over the age of 75. Over the age of 75, females still require more semi-urgent and non-urgent triage resources however, the disparity is not as prominent. Another interesting difference is that females aged 15-29 had far more non-urgent visitations in Alberta compared to males in that same age-group whereas the disparity for all other age groups (30-49, 50-74, 75+) is significantly less.
An understanding of these insights can be utilized to effectively improve services that are required most by Albertas while reducing the overall burden on the healthcare system. This is instrumental for overall planning and resource allocation including the ability to oversee the need for additional services such as increasing the number of respiratory clinics within the province. Additionally, this underscores further investigation into the cause of the high number of patients visiting the hospital due to acute upper respiratory infections in Alberta.
Yorumlar