Prehospital emergency care : official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the National Association of State EMS Directors
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Timely triage and appropriate destination decision making for injured patients are central challenges faced by emergency medical services (EMS) systems. In 2010, North Carolina (NC) adopted a statewide Trauma Triage and Destination Plan (TTDP) based on the CDC's Field Triage Guidelines to better address these challenges. We sought to characterize the implementation of these guidelines by quantifying their effect on multiple metrics of patient care. ⋯ We found that implementation of region-specific destination plans based on the Field Triage Guidelines had little effect on selected hospital destination, scene times, transport times, and other metrics of EMS decision making and effectiveness. We suspect this is due to delays in information dissemination and adoption by field providers.