Reducing Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Usage as Interfacility Transport for Patients Presenting with Chest Pain

TL;DR

This study shows how using a new tool and education can reduce unnecessary ambulance use for low-risk chest pain patients.

Contribution

A novel evidence-based self-transport tool and physician education reduced EMS use for low-risk chest pain patients.

Findings

EMS usage for low-risk chest pain patients decreased by 30%.

No adverse safety outcomes were observed after implementing the changes.

Abstract

Background: Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) is a “can’t miss” diagnosis. The gold-standard workup for this requires serial troponin biomarker evaluation over a period of hours. Traditionally, many of these patients required telemetry while being evaluated in this fashion; however, the high-quality literature suggests that low-risk patients do not require ongoing continuous cardiac monitoring. Locally, it was found that over 70% of patients presenting with low-risk chest pain to our high-volume urgent care were transferred to the main hospital for an ACS rule-out work-up via emergency medical services (EMS). We felt this intersection of patient care and medical services could be streamlined to reduce critical resource utilization. Objective: The aim of this study is to reduce the usage of EMS utilization for transport of low-risk chest-pain patients from the urgent care to the main hospital by 25% over a 3-month period. Methods: This study was conducted as an uncontrolled before–after interrupted time series design. A comprehensive data drilldown was performed through a chart review and structured clinical-practice evaluation. This led to a multi-factorial quality improvement initiative centered around the creation of an evidence-based safe-for-self-transport tool and physician education. The primary outcome measure was the proportion of patients transported via EMS with the main balancing measures being the proportion of self-transported patients admitted to the hospital and the time to troponin blood-draw in self-transported patients. Results: The education and the newly developed transport tool resulted in a sustained shift below the previous baseline system mean control limit, indicating a significant reduction in EMS usage for patient transport. The overall reduction in usage was 30%. No change in balancing (safety) measures was identified post-implementation. Conclusions: EMS remains a finite resource within many Canadian health regions. The results of this study show that by focusing on a cardinal emergency-department presentation like chest pain, adapting evidence-based practice through quality-improvement methodologies can result in a significant sustained reduction in EMS utilization.

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