An Evaluation of Community Assessment Tools

During severe influenza pandemics healthcare demand can exceed clinical capacity to provide normal standards of care. Community Assessment Tools (CATs) could provide a framework for triage decisions for hospital referral and admission. CATs have been developed based on evidence that supports the rec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-09, Vol.8 (9), p.e75384
Main Authors: Semple, Malcolm G, Myles, Puja R, Nicholson, Karl G, Lim, Wei Shen, Read, Robert C, Taylor, Bruce L, Brett, Stephen J, Openshaw, Peter J. M, Enstone, Joanne E, McMenamin, James, Bannister, Barbara, Nguyen-Van-Tam, Jonathan S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Domestic cats
Epidemics
Health aspects
Influenza
Medical care quality
Pediatric diseases
Prognosis
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Summary:During severe influenza pandemics healthcare demand can exceed clinical capacity to provide normal standards of care. Community Assessment Tools (CATs) could provide a framework for triage decisions for hospital referral and admission. CATs have been developed based on evidence that supports the recognition of severe influenza and pneumonia in the community (including resource limited settings) for adults, children and infants, and serious feverish illness in children. CATs use six objective criteria and one subjective criterion, any one or more of which should prompt urgent referral and admission to hospital. A retrospective evaluation of the ability of CATs to predict use of hospital-based interventions and patient outcomes in a pandemic was made using the first recorded routine clinical assessment on or shortly after admission from 1520 unselected patients (800 female, 480 children
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0075384