Wie heb ik aan de lijn?

Objective

Is a call made by a surrogate related to urgency allocation or higher odds of a life-threatening event (LTE)?

Design

Cross-sectional study.

Method

Calls to the OHS-PC were classified into ‘patient-initiated call’ or ‘surrogate call’. Odds ratios were calculated for the relationship between the type of call and (a) urgency allocation, (b) ACS, and (c) life-threatening event.

Results

In total 2428 recordings were included for analysis. Around half of the recordings were surrogate calls, and these more often received a high urgency (80.0%) than patient-initiated calls (57.8%). Of all participants, 13.9% were diagnosed with a LTE; in women 10.3%, in men 18.3%. In the surrogate call group this was 18.8%, in the patient-initiated call group 8.9%.

Conclusions

Surrogate calls on behalf of a patient with symptoms suggestive of ACS receive more often a high urgency, and these patients have a risk twice as high of an LTE.

Conflict of interest and financial support: ICMJE forms provided by the authors are available online along with the full text of this article.