Retriage

Re triage is the reassessment of patients who have already been triaged in order to determine whether their clinical status or resource needs have changed and whether their priority for treatment or transport should be adjusted. The goal is to allocate scarce emergency resources—such as personnel, beds, and medications—to those most in need as the situation evolves. Retriage is common in settings with mass casualty incidents, crowded emergency departments, and other dynamic environments where patient conditions can deteriorate or improve rapidly.

Contexts for retriage include prehospital care, hospital emergency departments, and disaster response. In prehospital care, responders may re-evaluate a patient en route after initial assessment or following initial interventions. In hospital EDs, patients can be re-triaged if they respond to treatment or if crowding changes disposition. In disaster medicine, retriage cycles may be conducted at regular intervals or in response to new information about patient load and resource availability.

Process and practice typically involve repeating focused assessments of vital signs, mental status, and response to initial interventions; reapplying triage categories or priority labels; updating treatment plans; and communicating changes to receiving teams. Documentation is updated to reflect the new priority and disposition decisions, and transport plans may be altered accordingly.

Impact and limitations include improved allocation of resources and potential improvements in patient outcomes, but retriage can add delays in already crowded environments and requires clear protocols and training to avoid inconsistency. Challenges include establishing consistent reassessment intervals and ensuring timely communication of status changes to all involved responders and facilities.

Related topics include triage, disaster medicine, and mass casualty incident management.