Annals of emergency medicine
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Although often the focus of quality improvement efforts, emergency medical services (EMS) advanced airway management performance has few national comparisons, nor are there many assessments with benchmarks accounting for differences in agency volume or patient mix. We seek to assess variations in advanced airway management and conventional intubation performance in a national cohort of EMS agencies. ⋯ In this national series, EMS advanced airway management and initial conventional intubation performance varied widely. Reliability adjustment and risk standardization may influence EMS airway management performance assessments.
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Multicenter Study
Measurement Under the Microscope: High Variability and Limited Construct Validity in Emergency Department Patient-Experience Scores.
We evaluate variability and construct validity in commercially generated patient-experience survey data in a large sample of US emergency departments (EDs). ⋯ In this sample, both physician- and facility-level patient-experience data varied greatly month to month, with physician variability being considerably higher. Facility-level scores have greater construct validity than physician-level ones. Optimizing data gathering may reduce variability in ED patient-experience data and better inform decisionmaking, quality measurement, and pay for performance.
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We seek to determine the effect of intraosseous over intravenous vascular access on outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. ⋯ In adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients, intraosseous vascular access was associated with poorer neurologic outcomes than intravenous access.