Introduction: The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC) Emergency Department (ED) has experienced an all patient increase in visits ranging from 1.5 to 6% per year since 2004. As a regional referral centre with no dedicated pediatric ED, TBRHSC is the sole emergency provider. Given the rising visits, we have investigated the pattern of pediatric visits, rates of admission to hospital and for a subset of years the investigations completed. Methods: Pediatric visits from 2004 to 2014 were summarized for the TBRHSC ED. The pattern of visits was examined along with the rate of admission to hospital. We also investigated the trend in acuity over the study period. Laboratory and imaging data are purged 1 year after each visit and were not available prior to 2011 but were summarized for the remainder of the years to identify the rates of all investigations completed. Results: From 2004 to 2014 there was a total increase in visits of 7.5% with the average annual admission rate ranging from 5 to 6.3%. The month to month variability in visits over the study period was high with a minimum of 1292 in August 2004 and a maximum of 2488 in October 2009. Nearly all patients were either CTAS II, III or IV, with level III having the highest occurrence. The mean investigation rate was approximately 16, 0.8, 24, and 2.3% of patients having laboratory, CT, x-ray and ultra-sound completed, respectively. Conclusion: Pediatric patients are an important subset of all patients visiting the ED. They often require special resources and at the TBRHSC use specific treatment spaces. In addition, there is a limited number of pediatric inpatient hospital beds. Managers could use the timing of visits, number of visits and admission rates to examine resource use and the probability of exceeding capacity. This study also provides baseline information on the rates of investigations, especially imaging such as CT which can have long-term radiological consequences.
