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Wong, Matthew

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Wong

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Wong, Matthew
Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.68f1ab4c-ca8e-459b-b375-c3f029f323fa

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    Experience Within the Emergency Department and Improved Productivity for First-Year Residents in Emergency Medicine and Other Specialties
    (Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, 2018) Joseph, Josh; Chiu, David; Wong, Matthew; Rosen, Carlo; Nathanson, Larry; Sanchez, Leon
    Introduction: Resident productivity is an important educational and operational measure in emergency medicine (EM). The ability to continue effectively seeing new patients throughout a shift is fundamental to an emergency physician’s development, and residents are integral to the workforce of many academic emergency departments (ED). Our previous work has demonstrated that residents make gains in productivity over the course of intern year; however, it is unclear whether this is from experience as a physician in general on all rotations, or specific to experience in the ED. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study, conducted in an urban academic hospital ED, with a three-year EM training program in which first-year residents see new patients ad libitum. We evaluated resident shifts for the total number of new patients seen. We constructed a generalized estimating equation to predict productivity, defined as the number of new patients seen per shift, as a function of the week of the academic year, the number of weeks spent in the ED, and their interaction. Off-service residents’ productivity in the ED was analyzed in a secondary analysis. Results: We evaluated 7,779 EM intern shifts from 7/1/2010 to 7/1/2016. Interns started at 7.16 (95% confidence interval [CI] [6.87 – 7.45]) patients per nine-hour shift, with an increase of 0.20 (95% CI [0.17 – 0.24]) patients per shift for each week in the ED, over 22 weeks, leading to 11.5 (95% CI [10.6 – 12.7]) patients per shift at the end of their training in the ED. The effects of the week of the academic year and its interaction with weeks in the ED were not significant. We evaluated 2,328 off-service intern shifts, in which off-service residents saw 5.43 (95% CI [5.02 – 5.84]) patients per nine-hour shift initially, with 0.46 additional patients per week in the ED (95% CI [0.25 – 0.68]). The weeks of the academic year were not significant. Conclusion: Intern productivity in EM correlates with time spent training in the ED, and not with experience on other rotations. Accordingly, an EM intern’s productivity should be evaluated relative to their aggregate time in the ED, rather than the time in the academic year.
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    Modelling attending physician productivity in the emergency department: a multicentre study
    (BMJ Publishing Group, 2018) Joseph, Josh; Davis, Samuel; Wilker, Elissa; Wong, Matthew; Litvak, Ori; Traub, Stephen J; Nathanson, Larry; Sanchez, Leon
    Objectives: Emergency physician productivity, often defined as new patients evaluated per hour, is essential to planning clinical operations. Prior research in this area considered this a static quantity; however, our group’s study of resident physicians demonstrated significant decreases in hourly productivity throughout shifts. We now examine attending physicians’ productivity to determine if it is also dynamic. Methods: This is a retrospective cohort study, conducted from 2014 to 2016 across three community hospitals in the north-eastern USA, with different schedules and coverage. Timestamps of all patient encounters were automatically logged by the sites’ electronic health record. Generalised estimating equations were constructed to predict productivity in terms of new patients per shift hour. Results: 207 169 patients were seen by 64 physicians over 2 years, comprising 9822 physician shifts. Physicians saw an average of 15.0 (SD 4.7), 20.9 (SD 6.4) and 13.2 (SD 3.8) patients per shift at the three sites, with 2.97 (SD 0.22), 2.95 (SD 0.24) and 2.17 (SD 0.09) in the first hour. Across all sites, physicians saw significantly fewer new patients after the first hour, with more gradual decreases subsequently. Additional patient arrivals were associated with greater productivity; however, this attenuates substantially late in the shift. The presence of other physicians was also associated with slightly decreased productivity. Conclusions: Physician productivity over a single shift follows a predictable pattern that decreases significantly on an hourly basis, even if there are new patients to be seen. Estimating productivity as a simple average substantially underestimates physicians’ capacity early in a shift and overestimates it later. This pattern of productivity should be factored into hospitals’ staffing plans, with shifts aligned to start with the greatest volumes of patient arrivals.
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    Utility of Chest Radiography in Emergency Department Patients Presenting with Syncope
    (Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, 2016) Wong, Matthew; Chiu, David; Shapiro, Nathan; Grossman, Shamai
    Introduction: Syncope has myriad etiologies, ranging from benign to immediately life threatening. This frequently leads to over testing. Chest radiographs (CXR) are among these commonly performed tests despite their uncertain diagnostic yield. The objective is to study the distribution of normal and abnormal chest radiographs in patients presenting with syncope, stratified by those who did or did not have an adverse event at 30 days. Methods: We performed a post-hoc analysis of a prospective cohort of consecutive patients presenting to an urban tertiary care academic medical center with a chief complaint of syncope from 2003–2006. The frequency and findings for each CXR were reviewed, as well as emergency department and hospital discharge diagnoses, and 30-day outcome. Results: There were 575 total subjects, 39.7% were male, and the mean age was 57.2 (SD 24.6). Of the 575 subjects, 403 (70.1%) had CXRs performed, and 116 (20.2%) had an adverse event after their syncope. Of the 116 people who had an adverse event, 15 (12.9%) had a positive CXR, 81 (69.8%) had a normal CXR, and 20 (17.2%) did not have a CXR as part of the initial evaluation. Among the 459 people who did not have an adverse event, 3 (0.7%) had a positive CXR, 304 (66.2%) had a normal CXR, and 152 (33.1%) did not have a CXR performed. Fifteen of the 18 patients (83.4%) with an abnormal CXR had an adverse event. Eighty-one of the 385 patients (21.0%) with a normal CXR had an adverse event. Among those who had a CXR performed, an abnormal CXR was associated with increased odds of adverse event (OR: 18.77 (95% CI= [5.3–66.4])). Conclusion: Syncope patients with abnormal CXRs are likely to experience an adverse event, though the majority of CXRs performed in the work up of syncope are normal.