EMCC dispatch priority for trauma patients in Norway: a retrospective cohort study

Background Dispatch priority assessments in emergency medical communication centres (EMCC) play a crucial role in determining how quickly emergency medical services reach the scene after an injury. Consequently, accurate prioritization of resources is important in ensuring that patients requiring specialized care receive timely treatment to optimize their outcome. Both dispatch under-triage, where patients with severe injuries receive low priority, and dispatch over-triage, which unnecessarily allocates limited emergency resources, can impact patient outcomes and system efficiency. This study aimed to assess dispatch priority in the EMCC for a cohort of trauma patients in Norway. Methods This registry-based study included 3633 patients from the Norwegian Trauma Registry and Oslo EMCC during 2019-2020. We assessed sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), false negative rate (dispatch under-triage rate), false positive rate (dispatch over-triage rate), and accuracy of dispatch priority. The New Injury Severity Score (NISS) > 15 was used as a reference standard. Differences in dispatch priority assessments were analysed using descriptive statistics. Two logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between dispatch priority and factors associated with the assessment. Results Our analysis revealed the following dispatch metrics: sensitivity (85%), specificity (11%), PPV (38%), NPV (53%), dispatch under-triage rate (15%), dispatch over-triage rate (89%), and overall accuracy (40%). Under-triaged dispatches frequently involved elderly trauma patients (53%) and patients with low-energy falls (51%). Elderly trauma patients had more than 7 times the odds of receiving inappropriately low dispatch priority compared to children and nearly twice the odds compared to adults, after accounting for factors such as injury mechanism. Similarly, female patients had 81% higher odds of receiving inappropriately low dispatch priority compared to male patients, when controlling for factors like age and injury mechanism. Among over-triaged dispatches, transport-related injuries accounted for half of the cases (50%). Conclusion This study primarily evaluated the national trauma system's dispatch priority criteria. Our findings indicate that elderly trauma patients, those with low-energy falls and female patients were often assigned inadequate priority by current criteria, indicating a need to reassess the current criteria to better address these patients' needs. Additionally, we found that patients involved in transport-related accidents were overrepresented among over-triaged dispatches, highlighting a potential misallocation of resources.