Utilization of Prehospital Dispatch Protocols to Identify Low-Acuity Patients

AbstractObjectives. To describe the experience of a U.S. emergency medical services (EMS) agency utilizing a dispatch algorithm to identify low-acuity patients and determine whether secondary telephone triage by a nurse was associated with subsequent hospital admission among those patients. Methods. This was a retrospective study of all patients meeting the low-acuity Omega classification by the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) in a large urban EMS system, conducted in two phases. Patients were excluded from the study if a refusal for transport was obtained, the call was received from a third-party caller, the MPDS system was not used, the patient was being referred from a skilled nursing facility, school, or university nursing office or physician's office, or if the call was referred to the Carolina Poison Center. Patients were enrolled over two phases using two different versions of the MPDS protocol, and in phase 2 patients were offered the option of speaking with an advice-line nurse. The outco...