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There’s no particular shame in not knowing something the patient doesn’t know–a social security number, for example, or the patient’s name if found unconscious.  What’s interesting is how often the EMS record doesn’t match the hospital record:  as much as 3 out of 4 times.  If you take social security number out of the mix, this drops the error rate to a mere 25%.

Some of the 360 cases analyzed had errors that were fairly simple:  misspellings, use of diminutives instead of full first names (e.g. Tom/Thomas).  Some were a bit more serious:  219 missing social security numbers (given that the population was chest pain patients, there shouldn’t have been that many people who didn’t know their numbers), and 10 with illegible handwriting.

This last is the most serious, and is actually no longer a problem.  (The study was performed in Pittsburgh, using tripsheets from 1996, and city EMS has since switched to computer documentation; this is an excellent illustration of how long it can take to get research through the pipeline.)  However, it shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place, just as it should never have been allowed to become a problem among doctors.

Filed under: EMS Research