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Small rural emergency services can electronically collect accurate episode‐level data: A cross‐sectional study
Author(s) -
Dawson Samantha L.,
Baker Tim,
Salzman Scott
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
australian journal of rural health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.48
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1440-1584
pISSN - 1038-5282
DOI - 10.1111/ajr.12154
Subject(s) - audit , medicine , triage , data collection , confidence interval , emergency department , medical emergency , cross sectional study , emergency medicine , nursing , statistics , business , mathematics , accounting , pathology
Objective There is little evidence that useful electronic data could be collected at A ustralian small rural emergency services. If in future their funding model changed to the A ctivity‐ B ased F unding model, then they would need to collect and submit more data. We determine whether it is possible to collect episode‐level data at six small rural emergency services and quantify the accuracy of eight fields. Design A prospective cross‐sectional study.Setting South‐West Victoria, Australia. Participants Six small rural emergency services.Intervention We collected and audited episode‐level emergency data from participating services between 1 February 2011 and 31 January 2012. A random sample of these data were audited monthly. Research assistants located at each service supported data entry and audited data accuracy for four hours per week.Main outcome measures Rates for data completeness, accuracy and total accuracy were calculated using audit data. Results Episode‐level data were collected for 20 224 presentations across six facilities. The audit dataset consisted of 8.5% (1504/17 627) of presentations from five facilities. For all fields audited, the accuracy of entered data was high (>93%).Triage category was deemed appropriate for 95.9% (95% confidence interval ( CI ): 94.9–96.9%) of the patient records reviewed. Some procedures were missing (28.7%, 95% CI : 27.2–30.3%). No significant improvement in data accuracy over 12 months was observed. Conclusion All six services collected useful episode‐level data for 12‐months with four hours per week of assistance. Data entry accuracy was high for all fields audited, and data entry completeness was low for procedures.