Patient presentation at emergency department

Provided with a service by a treating medical officer or nurse. (In hospital data collection systems, the time and date of the first contact would be selected from the earliest three different recorded times.)

The act of receiving treatment in the emergency department is logically preceded by some form of triage event - either formally or informally. For instance, a patient may be so critically ill that they by-pass the formal triage process to receive resuscitative intervention. However, the act of prioritising access to care according to the level of need has still occurred.

This metadata item supports the provision of unit record and/or summary level data by state and territory health authorities as part of the National Minimum Data Set - Emergency department waiting times.