An observational study in Emergency Department and Crowding, sponsored by Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research. Active, not recruiting at 52 sites in Italy. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2026-05-20.
Sponsored by Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research · Observational
Fenice has proposed a new indicator to measure the level of crowding in the ER. The aim of this study is to evaluate, in a national multicenter context, the degree of agreement between the Fenice indicator and the perception of crowding of the ER operators and to compare this agreement with that between NEDOCS and the perception of the operators.
The NEDOCS (National Emergency Department OverCrowding Study) is currently the most widely used indicator in Italy to measure the level of crowding in Emergency Departments (EDs). However, despite its widespread use, it presents several critical issues. First of all, it was developed in a context very different from the current Italian one, since it was built on data collected in 2002 in 8 medium-large US university EDs. It is therefore not possible to take for granted that this indicator can accurately describe the current crowding conditions of Italian EDs. Furthermore, the factors that make up the NEDOCS are often calculated differently by the various hospital facilities, compromising the comparability of the estimates.
Fenice has proposed a new indicator to measure the level of crowding in EDs. The indicator was developed to measure one of the objective consequences of crowding in EDs, namely the increase in waiting time for patients with a problem classified as minor urgency or deferrable to triage (codes 3 and 4). In parallel, the Fenice study has shown that NEDOCS is not very sensitive to this objective consequence of crowding.
The aim of this study is to evaluate, in a national multicenter context, the degree of agreement between the Fenice indicator and the perception of crowding of the operators of the ER and to compare this agreement with that between NEDOCS and the perception of the operators.
88 studies on the registry are indexed under Crowding; 22 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 828 is above the median of 664 across 14 observational studies indexed under Crowding.
Browse Crowding studies →Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research is the lead sponsor of 160 studies on the registry; 37 are open to participants now.
Compared within Crowding, this study's primary condition as ClinicalTrials.gg classifies it; the registry's first condition term is Emergencies. The counts are of registry records indexed under each term, refreshed daily. How we classify →
Patients arriving in the emergency department at the time of the survey.
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Patients that are in EDs at the time of the survey
Exclusion Criteria:
Patients that are in EDs, but not at the time of the survey
All patients arrived in ED during the year 2024 and patientes arrived in the period of active monitoring of the perception of crowding.
Proportion of variation in the ED staff perceived crowding level that is explained by the Fenice crowding score.
The outcome will be measured using the coefficient of determination (referred to as R2) of the linear model regressing the perceived level of crowding on the Fenice score.
Time frame: September 2025 - December 2025
Proportion of variation in the ED staff perceived crowding level that is explained by the NEDOCS score, measured using the coefficient of determination (R2) of the linear model regressing the perceived level of crowding on the NEDOCS score.
Time frame: September 2025 - December 2025
Plan to share: Undecided
No publications or documents are linked to this record.
Ran from Oct 2025 to primary completion in Dec 2025, 1 month.
How these figures are worked out, and which studies are left out of them.
This study is active, not recruiting, as verified in May 2026. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research →