An assessment of clinical performance measures for pediatric emergency physicians

The objectives were to evaluate clinical performance measures used for pediatric emergency medicine (PEM) physicians for reliability, correlation with one another, and relationship with clinical experience. This retrospective cohort study collected performance data for PEM physicians working at an urban children's hospital emergency department (ED) for each of 7 consecutive 6-month periods. Low correlations were seen between patients per hour or admission rate and 72-hour revisit rates. No significant association existed between level of experience and any performance measure. Physician treatment times appeared to be most reliable, and revisit rates were least reliable. Increase in number of patients seen per hour or lower admission rates in the ED are not significantly associated with an increase in revisit rates. Provider experience did not affect performance measures. Physician treatment time, patients per hour, admission rate, and charges per hour are reliable measures to assess the clinical performance of PEM physicians working at a single center.