Triage decisions and health outcomes among oncology patients: a comparative study of medical and surgical cancer cases in emergency departments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Cancer-related emergencies are a significant challenge for healthcare systems globally, including Jordan. Effective triage is critical in ensuring timely and accurate prioritization of care, especially for surgical cancer patients requiring urgent intervention. However, under-triage-misclassification of high-acuity patients into lower urgency categories-can lead to significant delays and worsened outcomes. Despite the recognized importance of accurate triage, limited research has evaluated its impact on cancer patients in Jordan, particularly those requiring surgical care. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the timeliness and prioritization of care for cancer patients admitted through the emergency department (ED) in Jordan. The specific objectives were to examine the association between under-triage and treatment delays and assess its impact on key outcomes, including time to physician assessment, time to treatment, and hospital length of stay. METHODS: A retrospective cohort design was used to analyze data from 481 cancer patients admitted through the ED in four governmental hospitals across Jordan. Two cohorts were established: surgical cancer patients requiring emergency interventions and non-surgical cancer patients presenting with other oncological emergencies. Triage accuracy was assessed using the Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (CTAS), and under-triage was identified when patients requiring high urgency care (CTAS I-III) were misclassified into lower urgency categories (CTAS IV-V). Data were collected from electronic health records and analyzed using multiple linear regression to evaluate the association between under-triage and treatment outcomes. RESULTS: The majority of patients were elderly, with a mean age of 62.6 years (± 10.7), and a significant proportion presented with advanced-stage cancer (83.4% in stages III and IV). Surgical patients frequently exhibited severe symptoms such as acute pain (51.6%) and respiratory discomfort (41.1%). Under-triage rates were 44.1% for surgical patients and 39.4% for non-surgical patients. Among surgical patients, under-triage significantly delayed time to physician assessment (β = 34.9 min, p < 0.001) and time to treatment (β = 68.0 min, p < 0.001). For non-surgical patients, under-triage delays were even greater, with prolonged physician assessment times (β = 48.6 min, p < 0.001) and ED length of stay (β = 7.3 h, p < 0.001). Both cohorts experienced significant increases in hospital length of stay (surgical: β = 3.2 days, p = 0.008; non-surgical: β = 3.2 days, p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Under-triage in Jordanian EDs is strongly associated with significant delays in care for both surgical and non-surgical cancer patients, highlighting systemic gaps in acuity recognition and triage processes. These findings underscore the need for targeted interventions to improve triage accuracy, particularly through oncology-specific training and the integration of evidence-based tools like SIRS criteria. Enhancing ED processes for cancer patients is crucial to reducing delays, optimizing resource allocation, and improving clinical outcomes in this vulnerable population. CLINICAL TRIAL NUMBER: Not applicable.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".