Canadian Emergency Department Information System (CEDIS) Presenting Complaint List (Version 1.0).

Pressures related to emergency department (ED) overcrowding and cost containment make it increasingly important to characterize the patients we serve and analyze the work we do; but until recently, few EDs have been able to track or describe their case mix, care processes, workloads, utilization, efficiency or patient outcomes. Regional health authorities across Canada have identified electronic data collection as a priority. Many EDs are developing information systems, but without coordination they are likely to establish different datasets and conflicting data definitions. Resulting variations in the way that ED data are defined and captured will limit their future utility. Recognizing this, the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP), the National Emergency Nurses Affiliation (NENA), and l'Association des médecins d'urgence du Québec (AMUQ) launched the Canadian Emergency Department Information System (CEDIS) initiative — a program to develop and implement common national ED information gathering systems. In 2001, the CEDIS group published a common national ED dataset that EDs and hospital administrators can use as a template for future information gathering. A system that allows EDs to classify patients and define comparable case-mix groupings will help EDs describe their patient populations, workloads, staffing and resource needs, and enable comparison across sites and regions. Emergency department case-mix groups will be based in part on the Canadian Emergency Department Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS), which has been prospectively validated and adopted by most Canadian EDs. However, CTAS defines only acuity; therefore the CEDIS Working Group proposed that ED case-mix groups should be based on both presenting complaint and CTAS triage level. Currently, most Canadian EDs rely on free-text capture of presenting complaints, which precludes categorization, analysis or comparison between sites. Our objective was to develop a standardized presenting complaint list for Canadian EDs that can form the basis for future ED case-mix groups. This would facilitate clinical quality improvement, research and benchmarking at a local, regional and national level.