TY - JOUR T1 - Defining “high-frequency” emergency department use JF - Canadian Family Physician JO - Can Fam Physician SP - e395 LP - e399 VL - 63 IS - 9 AU - Cai lei Matsumoto AU - Teresa O’Driscoll AU - Sharen Madden AU - Brittany Blakelock AU - Jennifer Lawrance AU - Len Kelly Y1 - 2017/09/01 UR - http://www.cfp.ca/content/63/9/e395.abstract N2 - Objective To suggest a functional definition for identification of “high-frequency” emergency department (ED) users in rural areas.Design Retrospective analysis of secondary data.Setting Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre in northwestern Ontario.Participants All ED visitors (N = 7121) in 2014 (N = 17 911 visits) in one rural hospital.Main outcome measures The number of patients and visits identified using different definitions of high-frequency use.Results By using the most common definition of high-frequency use (≥ 4 annual visits) for our hospital data, we identified 16.7% of ED patients. Using 6 or more annual visits as the definition, we identified 7.9% of ED patients; these patients accounted for 31.3% of the ED visit workload. Using the definition of 6 or more identifies less than 10% of the patients, which is a similar result to using the lower visit standard (≥ 4) in urban centres.Conclusion We suggest that the definition for high-frequency visitors to a rural ED should be 6 or more annual visits. Other useful subsets might include very high-frequency users (12 to 19 annual visits) and super users (≥ 20 annual visits). ER -