Emergency Department Quality, Physician Calibre and Hospital and Community Involvement among Physician-led Democratic Emergency Medicine Practice Groups: A Cross-sectional Survey with Comparisons to a Nationwide Performance Measure Report

Introduction:Delivering high-quality healthcare extends beyond individual provider factors.Groups delivering medical care track metrics and develop processes on a system level to improve these measures.Few comparisons of the quality of healthcare, community involvement and group characteristics exist between healthcare systems and physician-owned organisations.Methods: This is a cross-sectional survey study quantifying group practice characteristics, Emergency Department (ED) quality metrics, physician calibre and hospital and community involvement among democratic, physician-led emergency medicine practice groups.Where possible, these findings were compared with the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance (EDBA) 2021 performance measures report.Results: Survey respondents, all of whom were democratic emergency medicine practice groups, showed high rates of physician retention, exceptionally very high rates of board certification, more favourable ED throughput metrics when measured against the EDBA report, lower staffing ratios and high levels of hospital and community involvement.Conclusion: This cross-sectional survey highlights the value of democratic, physician-owned and physician-led emergency medicine groups.The survey respondents were democratic, physician-owned emergency medicine practice groups, and they showed overall better ED throughput metrics, high rates of physician retention and board certification, and high levels of hospital and community involvement compared to the EDBA 2021 performance measures report.