Can emergency medical dispatch codes predict prehospital interventions for common 9-1-1 call types?
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA. ksporer@sfghed.ucsf.edu OBJECTIVE: The Medical Priority Dispatch System is an emergency medical dispatch (EMD) system that is widely used to categorize 9-1-1 calls and optimize resource allocation. This study evaluates the ability of EMD and non-EMD codes (calls not processed by EMD) to predict prehospital use of medications and procedures. METHODS: All transported prehospital patients placed in an EMD or non-EMD category that exceeded 500 total calls from January 1, 2004, to December 31, 2006, in a suburban California county were matched with their prehospital electronic patient care record. These records (N = 69,541) were queried for the following prehospital interventions: basic life support (BLS) care only, intravenous line placement only, medication given, and procedures. Advanced life support (ALS) interventions were defined as the administration of a medications or a procedure. The number
