Increasing emergency number utilisation is not driven by low-acuity calls: an observational study of 1.5 million emergency calls (2018–2021) from Berlin

Autor: David Herr, Sangeeta Bhatia, Florian Breuer, Stefan Poloczek, Christopher Pommerenke, Janosch Dahmen
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: BMC Medicine, Vol 21, Iss 1, Pp 1-14 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1741-7015
DOI: 10.1186/s12916-023-02879-7
Popis: Abstract Background The Emergency Medical Service (EMS) in Germany is increasingly challenged by strongly rising demand. Speculations about a greater utilisation for minor cases have led to intensive media coverage, but empirical evidence is lacking. We investigated the development of low-acuity calls from 2018 to 2021 in the federal state of Berlin and its correlations with sociodemographic characteristics. Methods We analysed over 1.5 million call documentations including medical dispatch codes, age, location and time using descriptive and inferential statistics and multivariate binary logistic regression. We defined a code list to classify low-acuity calls and merged the dataset with sociodemographic indicators and data on population density. Results The number of emergency calls (phone number 112 in Germany) increased by 9.1% from 2018 to 2021; however, the proportion of low-acuity calls did not increase. The regression model shows higher odds of low-acuity for young to medium age groups (especially for age 0–9, OR 1.50 [95% CI 1.45–1.55]; age 10–19, OR 1.77 [95% CI 1.71–1.83]; age 20–29, OR 1.64 [95% CI 1.59–1.68] and age 30–39, OR 1.40 [95% CI 1.37–1.44]; p
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