COMPUTERIZED ALGORITHMS FOR EVALUATING PREHOSPITAL CARE

This report describes the development and an application of a methodology for evaluating the performance of emergency medical services prehospital personnel in the assessment and treatment of medical emergencies. The evaluation is computerized and permits economical screening of data taken from standardized prehospital response reports to screen out potential problem cases for indepth medical review. The methodology facilitates evaluations of prehospital responses over time for individual practitioners, evaluation of individual service performance, and multi-service (regional) comparative evaluations. The appropriate treatment for particular types of presenting patients is specified in computerized clinical algorithms which were developed for a broad variety of medical emergencies. For a given patient, the computer compares the treatment prescribed in the appropriate algorithm and those actually recorded on the response report. The appropriateness of each action is scored. Those cases for which the treatment provided deviates significantly from that specified by the algorithm are screened out by the computer for indepth medical review. Descriptive results are provided on the application of the methodology to evaluate the relative performance of a representative sample of 75 ambulance services. A description of the medical treatment algorithms for this methodology is contained in the Appendix to the report.

• Corporate Authors:

  Pittsburgh University, Pittsburgh

  Health Operations Research Group
  Pittsburgh, PA  United States  15261

  Department of Health and Human Services

  National Center for Health Services Research
  Rockville, MD  United States  20852
• Authors:
  • Wolfe, H
  • Shuman, L
• Publication Date: 1983-6

Media Info

• Features: Appendices; Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: v.p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Algorithms; Disasters and emergency operations; Evaluation; Hazards and emergency operations; Information processing; Medical services
• Old TRIS Terms: Prehospital care
• Subject Areas: Highways; Safety and Human Factors; I81: Accident Statistics;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00399243
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Report/Paper Numbers: Final Rpt., HS-806 596
• Contract Numbers: NCHSR-HS-02902
• Files: HSL, TRIS, USDOT
• Created Date: Sep 30 1985 12:00AM