• M Lipp, V Mihaljevic, and W Dick.
• Klinik für Anästhesiologie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
• Anaesthesist. 1994 Mar 1; 43 (3): 187-93.

AbstractThere is no doubt that a single emergency phone number is desirable, but in contrast to other countries, in Germany different emergency phone numbers and dispatching centers exist for the fire brigade (FB), the emergency medical service system (EMS), and the general practitioners' emergency service (GPS). Due to this fact, valuable time is often wasted by connecting or transferring emergency calls from one dispatching center to another. The purpose of this study was to analyse all calls received by the different dispatching centers in the city and county area of Mainz with respect to total number, fraction of emergency calls, and specificity. Further, the total number of calls potentially referring to a hypothetic single dispatching center with a general emergency phone number (112) was calculated. During a 4-month period, all telephone calls were registered and related to day, time, and origin of the call (city or county) and classified as non-urgent or emergency calls, calls appropriate to the dispatching center dialed, emergency calls to be transferred, or unspecific calls. A total of 80,987 calls were received (city area 84.3%, county area 15.7%), most of them directed to the FB of Mainz (33,086). The EMS dispatching center received 31,286 calls, the five GPS-centers 15,256 calls; 1359 emergency calls that were directed to the police or FB needed transfer to the EMS. During weekdays the EMS and FB received the most calls, with a reduced frequency on Saturdays and Sundays (Table 2). Nevertheless, the highest total numbers of calls were received on Saturdays due to multiple calls directed to the GPS.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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