Hospitals Infrequently Receive EMS Patient Care Reports in the Era of Electronic Medical Records: A Preliminary Report.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-12-2024

Publication Title

Prehospital emergency care : official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the National Association of State EMS Directors

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Emergency Medical Services (EMS) patient care reports (PCRs) are an important component for the transfer of patient care from EMS systems to hospitals and a foundational element of EMS quality improvement (QI). The PCR may serve as the only objective source of information for EMS patient presentation. Surprisingly little data, either objective or anecdotal, exists regarding the reliability of this process. Our objective is to describe the frequency of missing PCRs and the time of their receipt following EMS transport to hospital emergency departments (EDs).

METHODS: We performed a retrospective study of EMS PCR provision for patients transported to a large single eight hospital health system in Southeast Michigan from 1/1/2022 to 7/1/2023. We included agencies who transported >100 patients annually to system hospitals. All PCRs are transmitted by fax or to email server and manually uploaded into the system's EPIC

RESULTS: There were 155,423 patients transported by 63 EMS agencies. Overall, receipt of PCRs varied substantially by hospital mean (SD) 50.6% (23.5), median (IQR) 44.0% (33.9, 70.2). A minority 26.3% (26.2) of these were uploaded within 120 min of hospital arrival. PCRs receipt also varied substantially by agency, with overall median (IQR) of 56.8% (17.2, 83.1).

CONCLUSIONS: Many PCRs are missing after EMS transport, with marked variation in submission rates and time to upload by agency and hospital. Many PCRs were infrequently available for use in a timely manner. Further assessment is needed to quantify the degree to which the lack of transfer of documentation of EMS patient care exists across emergency care systems.

First Page

1

Last Page

5

DOI

10.1080/10903127.2024.2438392

ISSN

1545-0066

PubMed ID

39666386

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