Scheduled Emergency Trauma Operation: The Green Line Orthopedic Trauma Surgery Process Of Care:

Background and Aims:Traditionally, patients requiring an orthopedic emergency operation were admitted to an inpatient ward to await surgery. This often led to congestion of wards and operation rooms while, for less urgent traumas, the time spent waiting for the operation often became unacceptably long. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the flow of patients coded green in a traffic light–based coding process aimed at decreasing the burden on wards and enabling a scheduled emergency operation in Central Finland Hospital.Materials and Methods:Operation urgency was divided into three categories: green (>48 h), yellow (8–48 h), and red (<8 h). Patients, who had sustained an orthopedic trauma requiring surgery, but not inpatient care (green), were assigned an operation via green line process. They were discharged until the operation, which was scheduled to take place during office hours.Results:Between January 2010 and April 2015, 1830 green line process operations and 5838 inpatient emergency operation...