Triage As Performed to Triage as Imagined: PACS and The Spin-Offs at The Emergency Department

<p><strong>Abstract</strong></p>\n<p>No single triage scale will completely address or perfectly fit an Emergency Department (ED) practice or requirements. Each Emergency Department will have its own foundational triage model. Modifications and customization should be made as deemed fit, to ensure the adopted model, with its spin-offs, works and meets the needs in achieving the set KPIs. Essentially the model in practice needs to ensure triage is timely, and practical, reduces ‘bottlenecks’ and delays, as much as possible, and is able to pick up the serious diagnoses/ acute presentations with very low levels of acceptable misses and errors.</p>\n<p>At the ED of Singapore General Hospital, we started off with the PACS (Patient Acuity Categorization Scale) System but have evolved it over the years to meet our needs of the everchanging and dynamic ED patient load, profile, and disease trends. This paper shares the experience and the spin-offs.</p>\n<p><strong>Key Words: </strong>Triage, Emergency Department, Patient Acuity Categorization Scale (PACS)<strong>, </strong>upskilling.</p>