Emergency Care Clinician Time Consensus Study Report

The Emergency Care Clinician Time Consensus Study (the consensus study) was designed to complement the first component of the Emergency Care Costing and Classification Project - the Emergency Care Costing Study (the costing study).

The costing study set out to collect information on activities/procedures carried out in emergency departments, the characteristics of the patients who received those activities/procedures, and the time associated with delivering these activities/procedures to the patients. The consensus study sought to obtain time estimations for the same set of activities/procedures collected in the costing study, adjusted (where relevant) for the different categories of patients receiving those activities/procedures. These estimates were provided by clinicians through a Delphi consultation process.

The purpose of the consensus study is to validate the results of the costing study, as well as fill any gaps (that is, due to low number of observations for any specific activity/ procedure during the study period). The reason for the validation, and for the need to fill any gaps, is to ensure the data from the costing study is as complete and representative as possible as this data is being used to cost emergency department presentations, which in turn will be used as the basis for the classification system to be developed for Australian emergency departments.