Accuracy of EMS Trauma Transport Destination Plans in North Carolina.

Abstract Objective. Planning for time-sensitive injury may allow emergency medical services (EMS) systems to more accurately triage patients meeting accepted criteria to facilities most capable of providing life-saving treatment. In 2010, North Carolina (NC) implemented statewide Trauma Triage and Destination Plans (TTDPs) in all 100 of North Carolina's county-defined EMS systems. Each system was responsible for identifying the specific destination hospitals with appropriate resources to treat trauma patients. We sought to characterize the accuracy of their hospital designations. Methods. In this cross-sectional study, we collected TTDPs for each county-defined EMS system, including their assigned hospital capabilities (i.e., trauma center or community hospital). We conducted a survey with each EMS system to determine how their TTDP was constructed and maintained, as well as with each TTDP-designated hospital to verify their capabilities. We determined the accuracy of the EMS assigned hospital designations by comparing them to the hospital's reported capabilities. Results. The 100 NC EMS systems provided 380 designations for 112 hospitals. TTDPs were created by EMS administrators and medical directors, with only 55% of EMS systems engaging a hospital representative in the plan creation. Compared to the actual hospital capabilities, 97% of the EMS TTDP designations were correct. Twelve hospital designations were incorrect and the majority (10) overestimated hospital capabilities. Of the 100 EMS systems, 7 misclassified hospitals in their TTDP. EMS systems that did not verify their local hospitals' capabilities during TTDP development were more likely to incorrectly categorize a hospital's capabilities (p = 0.001). Conclusions. A small number of EMS systems misclassified hospitals in their TTDP, but most plans accurately reflected hospital capabilities. Misclassification occurred more often in systems that did not consult local hospitals prior to developing their TTDP. The potential of the TTDP to improve communication between EMS agencies and the facilities with which they work has not been fully realized. EMS agencies or systems should verify local hospital capabilities when engaging in destination planning efforts.

Prehospital system delay in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction care: a novel linkage of emergency medicine services and in hospital registry data.

BACKGROUND: Emergency medical services (EMS) are critical in the treatment of ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Prehospital system delays are an important target for improving timely STEMI care, yet few limited data are available. METHODS: Using a deterministic approach, we merged EMS data from the North Carolina Pre-hospital Medical Information System (PreMIS) with data from the Reperfusion of Acute Myocardial Infarction in Carolina Emergency Departments-Emergency Response (RACE-ER) Project. Our sample included all patients with STEMI from June 2008 to October 2010 who arrived by EMS and who had primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Prehospital system delays were compared using both RACE-ER and PreMIS to examine agreement between the 2 data sources. RESULTS: Overall, 8,680 patients with STEMI in RACE-ER arrived at a PCI hospital by EMS; 21 RACE-ER hospitals and 178 corresponding EMS agencies across the state were represented. Of these, 6,010 (69%) patients were successfully linked with PreMIS. Linked and notlinked patients were similar. Overall, 2,696 patients were treated with PCI only and were taken directly to a PCI-capable hospital by EMS; 1,750 were transferred from a non-PCI facility. For those being transported directly to a PCI center, 53% reached the 90-minute target guideline goal. For those transferred from a non-PCI facility, 24% reached the 120-minute target goal for primary PCI. CONCLUSIONS: We successfully linked prehospital EMS data with in hospital clinical data. With this linked STEMI cohort, less than half of patients reach goals set by guidelines. Such a data source could be used for future research and quality improvement interventions.

A link to improve stroke patient care: a successful linkage between a statewide emergency medical services data system and a stroke registry.

OBJECTIVES: regionalization of stroke care, including diversion to stroke centers, requires that emergency medical services (EMS) systems accurately identify acute stroke patients. A barrier to evaluating and improving EMS stroke patient identification is the inability to link EMS data with hospital data for individual patients. We sought to create and validate a linkage of the North Carolina EMS Data System (NC-EMS-DS) with data contained in the North Carolina Stroke Care Collaborative (NCSCC) Registry. METHODS: all NCSCC Registry patients arriving to one of three hospitals by EMS in a 6-month period were matched against NC-EMS-DS. Records were deterministically matched on receiving hospital, hospital arrival date/time, age, and sex. We performed linkage validation by providing each site investigator with a stroke patient list derived from North Carolina Stroke Care Collaborative Registry (NC-EMS-DS), matched by individual patient to deidentified data in the NCSCCR. Each site investigator determined the set of true matches by comparing the matched list to a NCSCCR patient identifier key maintained at each site. Incorrect matches were reviewed by the research team to identify methods for future improvement in the matching logic. RESULTS: for the three validation hospitals, 753 NCSCC Registry patients arrived by EMS. For these patients, 473 (63%) matches to local EMS records were identified, and 421 (89%) of the matches were verified using full patient identifiers. Most match verification failures were due to incorrect date/time stamp and inability to find a corresponding EMS record. CONCLUSIONS: linking EMS records electronically to a stroke registry is feasible and leads to a large number of valid matches. This small validation is limited by EMS data quality. Matching may improve with better EMS documentation and standardized facility documentation.