Operation care: a pilot case management intervention for frequent emergency medical system users

Frequent callers to and users of emergency medical systems: a systematic review

“…After full paper review, this was reduced to 16 that met the inclusion criteria. A reference and citation search for included articles identified 778 articles, of which 2 articles matched the inclusion criteria that were not previously identified 10 18. Eighteen studies (table 1) fulfilled the inclusion criteria with years of publication ranging from 198119 to 2012 10…”

“…Eleven studies were from the USA,10 19–22 26 28–31 33 four from Australia,18 23 27 32 two from the UK7 25 and one from Taiwan 24. Ten were based in an ED,7 18 19 23 25–28 32 33 seven in an EMS10 21 22 24 29 31 34 and one in a psychiatric emergency service 20.…”

“…Ten were based in an ED,7 18 19 23 25–28 32 33 seven in an EMS10 21 22 24 29 31 34 and one in a psychiatric emergency service 20. The majority of studies used a database review,7 18 21–27 32 although other methods included case management interventions,10 28 31 cohort studies,13 30 case control studies20 29 and a review of medical records 19…”

“…Seven studies (table 3) examined frequent users of an EMS,10 21 22 24 29–31 with two of these being intervention studies10 31 and five which explored the characteristics of frequent users 21 22 24 29 30. From the five studies exploring characteristics, frequent users accounted for between 0.2% and 23% of patients which in turn accounted for between 1.4% and 40% of all transports via ambulance.…”

The role of the emergency medical dispatch centre (EMDC) and prehospital emergency care safety: results from an incident report (IR) system

“…As defined by Cooney et al, the ambulance offload delay is the time that "it takes to transfer a patient to an ED stretcher and for the ED staff to assume the responsibility for the care of the patient." 14 A delay occurring at this stage can have important consequences for patients and ambulance turnover. The ongoing implementation of the global positioning system (GPS) allows for continuous updating of vehicle localization so that the dispatcher can save valuable time coordinating vehicle allocation.…”