Researchers modelled mortality after emergency department presentation using 593,673 de-identified records from a tertiary hospital in the Waikato region of New Zealand between 2016 and 2024, combining generalised linear models with regularised logistic regression. Age, clinical complexity and longer stays in the department were associated with worse outcomes, while longer waiting times were associated with better ones, which the authors attribute to the sickest patients being seen first. The resulting score reached an area under the curve of 0.95 for death in the department and 0.90 at 28 days.
Why it is interesting: It shows plainly why raw waiting-time and mortality correlations in emergency care invert once triage order is in the data.