Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Electronic versus manual data processing: evaluating the use of electronic health records in out-of-hospital clinical research.
The objective was to compare case ascertainment, agreement, validity, and missing values for clinical research data obtained, processed, and linked electronically from electronic health records (EHR) compared to "manual" data processing and record abstraction in a cohort of out-of-hospital trauma patients. ⋯ In this sample of out-of-hospital trauma patients, an all-electronic data processing strategy identified more patients and generated values with good agreement and validity compared to traditional data collection and processing methods.
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ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) care is time-dependent. Many STEMI patients require interhospital helicopter transfer for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) if ground emergency medical services (EMS) initially transport the patient to a non-PCI center. This investigation models potential time savings of ground EMS requests for helicopter EMS (HEMS) transport of a STEMI patient directly to a PCI center, rather than usual transport to a local hospital with subsequent transfer. ⋯ In this setting, ground EMS initiation of HEMS transfers for STEMI patients has the potential to reduce MCTB time, but most patients will still not achieve MCTB time of less than 90 minutes.