As published by DOTmed, November 20 2020.
Triage is a critical step in the care of a patient presenting to the emergency department for treatment. The emergency severity index (ESI) has been adopted in most US hospitals as a tool to yield quick, consistent clinical prioritizations of patients into five category groups. Recently, its effectiveness and reliability has been criticized, and new technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), has been proposed as an aide to the triage process. Experiences in hospitals across the US, however, have shown that ESI has not been implemented, validated and audited correctly, leading to a lack of competency and effective utilization. This leads to the question: is the ESI system itself flawed? This answer simply is no, but there are many opportunities to consider to ensure hospitals have a valid and reliable triage process in place.