Does telephone triage of emergency (999) calls using advanced medical priority dispatch (AMPDS) with Department of Health (DH) call prioritisation effectively identify patients with an acute coronary syndrome? An audit of 42 657 emergency calls to Hampshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust

Abstract

Does telephone triage of emergency (999) calls using advanced medical priority dispatch (AMPDS) with Department of Health (DH) call prioritisation effectively identify patients with an acute coronary syndrome? An audit of 42 657 emergency calls to

Fusion of dispatching centres into one entity: effects on performance

“…3,11 The positive predictive value in detecting cardiac emergencies by telephone triage has turned out to be poor. 6,12 Risk assessment protocols are not meant to be diagnostic tools but they should support appropriate allocation of limited ALS resources to patients with true cardiac emergencies. In this study, we specifically looked at patients with a final diagnosis of STEMI.…”

Is ambulance telephone triage using advanced medical priority dispatch protocols able to identify patients with acute stroke correctly?

“…Little work has been carried out examining the ability of telephone triage to identify specific life-threatening conditions correctly. Previous work from this ambulance service has shown that telephone triage is limited in its ability to identify acute coronary events correctly,10 but the ability of the same software to identify patients with an acute stroke correctly is unknown. We therefore carried out a retrospective study comparing the ‘chief complaint’ code allocated by the AMPDS telephone triage software with the final diagnosis made by a doctor at a hospital emergency department (ED) in order to establish the ability of telephone-based consultation to identify acute stroke and provide a strong link in the stroke ‘chain of survival’.…”

Reaction times as indicators of the quality of expert work of belgrade municipal institutions for emergency medical services

“…The survival potential of critically ill and severely injured persons is increased if the OHMT arrives faster, which, unfortunately is not always possible. The reaction time II is similar (14 min) in France and New York (10 min), while in some communities in California it is 15 min [14]. It is generally accepted within the field that an 'ideal' reaction time for emergency calls would be within 8 min ninety-percent of the time, but this objective is rarely achieved, and current research results question the validity of that international standard [15].…”