Correlation between the accuracy of the emergency response centre’s urgency assessment and emergency medical services non-conveyance: a retrospective register-based study in Finland

Correlation between the accuracy of the emergency response centre’s urgency assessment and emergency medical services non-conveyance: a retrospective register-based study in Finland

In modern emergency medical services (EMS), ambulances increasingly focus on examining and treating the patient at the scene. This has led to increased levels of non-conveyance. In Finland, for instance, approximately 40% of EMS dispatches end up in non-conveyance. As EMS systems evolve, the proportion of non-conveyance could serve as a cost-effective measure to assess the quality of the dispatch criteria, if a link to the performance of urgency assessment would be established. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the proportion of non-conveyance is associated with the test performance levels of the urgency assessment. This investigation was done separately within each dispatch category.

The proportion of over-triage was the only urgency assessment’s test performance variable that had a statistically significant correlation with the proportion of non-conveyance (r = 0.568; p = 0.003). Other test performance variables of the urgency assessment had no or little correlation to the proportion of non-conveyance. Of the 6,416 EMS dispatches in the study period, 42% (2,672) resulted in non-conveyance of the patient. In nine dispatch categories, at least half (51–69%) of the dispatches ended in non-conveyance.

Tomi Salminen, Kaius Kaartinen, Mira Palonen, Piritta Setälä, Eija Paavilainen & Sanna Hoppu

https://bmcemergmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12873-024-01108-5

BMC Emergency Medicine

15 oktober 2024

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