id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
ecj-7381	Mitsunaga, Toshiya; Ohtaki, Yuhei; Kiriyama, Nobuaki; Ohtani, Kei; Yajima, Wataru; Hibi, Takahiko; Takeda, Satoshi	Characteristics of patients hospitalised in an emergency department observation unit in Japan	2018	5	.pdf	application/pdf	4056	186	52	If they cannot recruit a hospital in the region, then they contact an emergency medical coordinator at the Tokyo Fire Department, who will contact other regional emergency medical centres for a hospital that can accept the patient.9 In 2011, difficult cases of transport totalled 14,449, which was roughly a third of the total in 2008 (35,746).9 Although adherence to the Tokyo Rule affords some benefits, its overall effects have been limited.9 The keywords of difficult cases of transport have been not only orthopaedics, alcohol and mental illness but also elderly patient, which indicates that the problems of elderly patients in obtaining transport to emergency medical facilities in Japan persist.9 Emergency department observation unit In the United States and some other developed countries, where the massive number of patients who present at emergency departments has also become a serious problem,10,11 hospitals have introduced emergency department observation units (EDOU) in order to not only manage emergency departments safely and smoothly but also reduce the number of cases requiring hospitali- sation.12 Although many hospitals in Japan have introduced EDOUs as well, their usefulness in managing elderly patients remains unclear. Hrev_master Abstract In Japan, transporting elderly patients to emergency depart- ments has recently posed serious problems, including a longer average time from patients’ initial emergency calls to their arrival at hospitals.	cache/ecj-7381.pdf	txt/ecj-7381.txt