Age-varying effects of repeated emergency department presentations for children in Canada

Repeated presentations to emergency departments (EDs) may indicate a lack of access to other health care resources. Age is an important predictor of frequent ED use; however, age-varying effects are not generally investigated. This study examines the age-specific effects of predictors on ED presentation frequency for children in Alberta and Ontario, Canada.

This retrospective study used population-based data during April 2010 to March 2017. Data were extracted from the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System for children aged <18 who were members of the top 10% of ED users in any one of the fiscal years 2011/2012 to 2015/2016 along with a comparison sample from the bottom 90%. A marginal regression model studied the age-varying associations on the frequency of ED presentations with province, sex, access to primary health care provider (for Ontario only), area of residence and lowest neighbourhood income quintile.

There were 2,481,172 patients who made 9,229,156 ED presentations. The effects of sex, lowest income quintile, rural residence, access to primary health care provider and province on the frequency of presentations varied by age. Notably, boys go from having more frequent presentations than girls when aged ≤5 (i.e. adjusted intensity ratio [IR]=1.04 at age 5, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.03,1.06) to less frequent for ages 8-11 years and beyond 14 (i.e. IR = 0.80 at age 15, 95% CI = 0.78,0.81). Adolescents aged ≥15 without access to a primary care provider had more frequent presentations compared to those with a primary care provider.

When examining the frequency of ED presentations in children, age-varying effects of predictors should be considered. Our more nuanced examination of age provides insights into how health services might better target programmes for different ages to potentially reduce unnecessary ED use by providing other health care alternatives.