NDLI: Acute care pathways for patients calling the out-of-hours services

Content Provider	Springer Nature : BioMed Central
Author	Søvsø, Morten Breinholt Huibers, Linda Bech, Bodil Hammer Christensen, Helle Collatz Christensen, Morten Bondo Christensen, Erika Frischknecht
Abstract	Background In Western countries, patients with acute illness or injury out-of-hours (OOH) can call either emergency medical services (EMS) for emergencies or primary care services (OOH-PC) in less urgent situations. Callers initially choose which service to contact; whether this choice reflect the intended differences in urgency and severity is unknown. Hospital diagnoses and admission rates following an OOH service contact could elucidate this. We aimed to investigate and compare the prevalence of patient contacts, subsequent hospital contacts, and the age-related pattern of hospital diagnoses following an out-of-hours contact to EMS or OOH-PC services in Denmark. Methods Population-based observational cohort study including patients from two Danish regions with contact to EMS or OOH-PC in 2016. Hospital contacts were defined as short (< 24 h) or admissions (≥24 h) on the date of OOH service contact. Both regions have EMS, whereas the North Denmark Region has a general practitioner cooperative (GPC) as OOH-PC service and the Capital Region of Copenhagen the Medical Helpline 1813 (MH-1813), together representing all Danish OOH service types. Calling an OOH service is mandatory prior to a hospital contact outside office hours. Results OOH-PC handled 91% (1,107,297) of all contacts (1,219,963). Subsequent hospital contacts were most frequent for EMS contacts (46–54%) followed by MH-1813 (41%) and GPC contacts (9%). EMS had more admissions (52–56%) than OOH-PC. For both EMS and OOH-PC, short hospital contacts often concerned injuries (32–63%) and non-specific diagnoses (20–45%). The proportion of circulatory disease was almost twice as large following EMS (13–17%) compared to OOH-PC (7–9%) in admitted patients, whereas respiratory diseases (11–14%), injuries (15–22%) and non-specific symptoms (22–29%) were more equally distributed. Generally, admitted patients were older. Conclusions EMS contacts were fewer, but with a higher percentage of hospital contacts, admissions and prevalence of circulatory diseases compared to OOH-PC, perhaps indicating that patients more often contact EMS in case of severe disease. However, hospital diagnoses only elucidate severity of diseases to some extent, and other measures of severity could be considered in future studies. Moreover, the socio-demographic pattern of patients calling OOH needs exploration as this may play an important role in choice of entrance.
Related Links	https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s12913-020-4994-0.pdf
Ending Page	10
Page Count	10
Starting Page	1
File Format	HTM / HTML
ISSN	14726963
DOI	10.1186/s12913-020-4994-0
Journal	BMC Health Services Research
Issue Number	1
Volume Number	20
Language	English
Publisher	BioMed Central
Publisher Date	2020-02-27
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Public Health Health Administration Health Informatics Nursing Research Out-of-hours medical care Delivery of health care Primary care Emergency medical services Denmark Diagnoses Telephone hotline
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Health Policy

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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