Abstract 13455: Predicting Emergency Department Disposition at Triage for Suspected Patients With Acute Coronary Syndrome Using Machine Learning Algorithms

Abstract

Introduction: Overcrowded emergency departments (ED) and undifferentiated patients make the provision of care and resources challenging. We examined whether machine learning algorithms could identify ED patients’ disposition (hospitalization and critical care admission) using readily available objective triage data among patients with symptoms suggestive of acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Methods: This was a retrospective observational cohort study of adult patients who were triaged at the ED for a suspected coronary event. A total of 162 input variables (k) were extracted from the electronic health record: demographics (k=3), mode of transportation (k=1), past medical/surgical history (k=57), first ED vital signs (k=7), home medications (k=31), symptomology (k=40), and the computer generated automatic interpretation of 12-lead electrocardiogram (k=23). The primary outcomes were hospitalization and critical care admission (i.e., admission to intensive or step-down care unit). We used 10-fold stratified cross validation to evaluate the performance of five machine learning algorithms to predict the study outcomes: logistic regression, naïve Bayes, random forest, gradient boosting and artificial neural network classifiers. We determined the best model by comparing the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of all models. Results: Included were 1201 patients (age 64±14, 39% female; 10% Black) with a total of 956 hospitalizations, and 169 critical care admissions. The best performing machine learning classifier for the outcome of hospitalization was gradient boosting machine with an AUC of 0.85 (95% CI, 0.82–0.89), 89% sensitivity, and F-score of 0.83; random forest classifier performed the best for the outcome of critical care admission with an AUC of 0.73 (95% CI, 0.70–0.77), 76% sensitivity, and F-score of 0.56. Conclusion: Predictive machine learning algorithms demonstrate excellent to good discriminative power to predict hospitalization and critical care admission, respectively. Administrators and clinicians could benefit from machine learning approaches to predict hospitalization and critical care admission, to optimize and allocate scarce ED and hospital resources and provide optimal care.