The calls to 112 command and control center and evaluation of use of the Emergency Ambulance Service in Denizli

Abstract

Objective: In this study we studied the calls to 112 command and control center in 2012-2013 years in our province and we aimed the evaluation of use of the emergency ambulance service in our province. Methods: By evaluating emergency call forms that is taken 112 command and control center head physician’s office, a descriptive study was done retrospectively. SPSS 17 program is used for the statistical analysis in this study. Results: It is identified that 51.8% of 1176126 emergency service applicants was male in 2012, 52.3% of 1185019 emergency service applicants was female in 2013. Ambulance service utilization was highest in summer (27%) and the peak value was in august. It is detected that 94% of the calls was unnecessary. The ambulance service utilization by the patients age 65 and over was 30% in 2012 and 2013. It is also identified that the mean ambulance arrival time to the patients was 8.6 min. in 2012 and 9.1 min. in 2013. As we determined, most of the reasons of emergency calls were medical diseases (72%) and traffic accidents (12%). In the patient’s classification according to their pre-diagnosis, the biggest patient group was trauma cases. In 2012 the trauma cases have had 23,3% rate among the pre-diagnosis reasons and in 2013 the value was 22,2%. In our study, the highest rate of ambulance exists is hospital transfer (64.2% in 2012, 63.1% in 2013). Most of the cases which are transported with ambulance have been gone to Denizli State Hospital (32.4%). Conclusion: The high rate of unnecessary calls to command and control center (95,5%) is a serious problem for the quality of service. Because of the fact that these kind of calls make 112 KKM busy unnecessarily; patients, which must have a priority to access to emergency services because of their severe illnesses, don’t arrive on time. So education programs or public spotlights should be performed to improve the public’s knowledge.