Background Triage of patients in the Emergency Department includes scoring of vital parameters. The objective of this study was to compare two such triage systems for assessing vital parameters - a single-parameter system, T-vital, as used in Danish Emergency Process Triage, and a multiple-parameter system, T-EWS, which we based on Early Warning Score (EWS) - and correlate the triage scores to in-hospital mortality and admission to ICU. Studies examining EWS in triage are currently limited in number. Methods Using data from the Acute Admission Database of Nordsjaellands Hospital (n = 6164 admissions), we calculated and stratified EWS into four T-EWS colour codes (red, orange, yellow, and green), testing different stratifications’ correlation to in-hospital mortality and admission to ICU. Afterwards, we compared the ability of the chosen T-EWS and T-vital to predict patients at risk (red and orange category) of in-hospital mortality or admission to ICU. The data were analysed using area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC), sensitivity, specificity, overtriage, undertriage, and diagnostic rates. Results