The Utility of Preliminary Patient Evaluation in a Febrile Respiratory Infectious Disease Unit outside the Emergency Department

Kang, Jun Sik; Jhun, Byung Woo; Yoon, Hee; Lim, Seong Mi; Ko, Eunsil; Park, Joo Hyun; Hwang, Sung Yeon; Lee, Se Uk; Lee, Tae Rim; Cha, Won Chul; Shin, Tae Gun; Sim, Min Seob; Jo, Ik Joon

EDs are one of the major gateways to hospital entry and have substantial burdens associated with infectious disease-related visits (7) (8) (9) (10) . Thus, accurate categorization of patients is required, and determination of the initial isolation level is one of the most difficult issues faced by ED physicians, especially when treating patients with a suspected contagious respiratory illness (11) (12) (13) . After the 2015 outbreak of fatal MERS-CoV at our institution (5, 14) , a febrile respiratory infectious disease unit (FRIDU) with a negative pressure ventilation system was separately constructed outside the ED; to prevent the spread of contagious diseases within the hospital, this unit triages and determines isolation levels for all emergency patients prior to their admission to the ED or hospital. However, data on the utility of such screening units are limited. We compared patients' initial FRIDU-determined isolation level with the level associated with their final diagnosis and assessed the limitations of the screening system. We hope this study will help efforts to integrate isolation strategies into ED contagious disease management procedures.