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Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, prehospital times were delayed for patients who needed to arrive at the hospital in a timely manner to receive treatment. To address this, in March 2020, the Korean government designated emergency medical centers for critical care (EMC-CC). Th...

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Autores principales: Park, Hang A, Kim, Sola, Ha, Sang Ook, Han, Sangsoo, Lee, ChoungAh
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8875071/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35207182
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm11040906
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author Park, Hang A
Kim, Sola
Ha, Sang Ook
Han, Sangsoo
Lee, ChoungAh
author_facet Park, Hang A
Kim, Sola
Ha, Sang Ook
Han, Sangsoo
Lee, ChoungAh
author_sort Park, Hang A
collection PubMed
description During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, prehospital times were delayed for patients who needed to arrive at the hospital in a timely manner to receive treatment. To address this, in March 2020, the Korean government designated emergency medical centers for critical care (EMC-CC). This study retrospectively analyzed whether this intervention effectively reduced ambulance diversion (AD) and shortened prehospital times using emergency medical service records from 219,763 patients from the Gyeonggi Province, collected between 1 January and 31 December 2020. We included non-traumatic patients aged 18 years or older. We used interrupted time series analysis to investigate the intervention effects on the daily AD rate and compared prehospital times before and after the intervention. Following the intervention, the proportion of patients transported 30–35 km and 50 km or more was 13.8% and 5.7%, respectively, indicating an increased distance compared to before the intervention. Although the change in the AD rate was insignificant, the daily AD rate significantly decreased after the intervention. Prehospital times significantly increased after the intervention in all patients (p < 0.001) and by disease group; all prehospital times except for the scene time of cardiac arrest patients increased. In order to achieve optimal treatment times for critically ill patients in a situation that pushes the limits of the medical system, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, even regional distribution of EMC-CC may be necessary, and priority should be given to the allocation of care for patients with mild symptoms.
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spelling pubmed-88750712022-02-26 Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study Park, Hang A Kim, Sola Ha, Sang Ook Han, Sangsoo Lee, ChoungAh J Clin Med Article During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, prehospital times were delayed for patients who needed to arrive at the hospital in a timely manner to receive treatment. To address this, in March 2020, the Korean government designated emergency medical centers for critical care (EMC-CC). This study retrospectively analyzed whether this intervention effectively reduced ambulance diversion (AD) and shortened prehospital times using emergency medical service records from 219,763 patients from the Gyeonggi Province, collected between 1 January and 31 December 2020. We included non-traumatic patients aged 18 years or older. We used interrupted time series analysis to investigate the intervention effects on the daily AD rate and compared prehospital times before and after the intervention. Following the intervention, the proportion of patients transported 30–35 km and 50 km or more was 13.8% and 5.7%, respectively, indicating an increased distance compared to before the intervention. Although the change in the AD rate was insignificant, the daily AD rate significantly decreased after the intervention. Prehospital times significantly increased after the intervention in all patients (p < 0.001) and by disease group; all prehospital times except for the scene time of cardiac arrest patients increased. In order to achieve optimal treatment times for critically ill patients in a situation that pushes the limits of the medical system, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, even regional distribution of EMC-CC may be necessary, and priority should be given to the allocation of care for patients with mild symptoms. MDPI 2022-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8875071/ /pubmed/35207182 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm11040906 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Park, Hang A
Kim, Sola
Ha, Sang Ook
Han, Sangsoo
Lee, ChoungAh
Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study
title Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_full Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_fullStr Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_full_unstemmed Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_short Effect of Designating Emergency Medical Centers for Critical Care on Emergency Medical Service Systems during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study
title_sort effect of designating emergency medical centers for critical care on emergency medical service systems during the covid-19 pandemic: a retrospective observational study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8875071/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35207182
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/jcm11040906
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