[Diagnostic agreement between emergency teams and hospital services]

Over the last 10 years the Public Health Emergency Service of Andalusia (Spain) has been conducting a study into the diagnostic agreement among its teams (061 teams) and those of primary care and hospitals. Diagnostic agreement between these teams and hospital teams was evaluated. When discrepancies were found, an assessment was made of whether these corresponded to the emergency team, transfer resources or hospital.

A descriptive study was performed. Five hundred ten patients whose particulars were already known were randomly selected. The patients, who required transfer to a public hospital, received assistance from 061 teams in Malaga in 2001. Data were gathered on personal details, the assistance received, transfer, hospital and diagnosis or diagnoses. The maximum number of diagnoses permitted was three, coded in accordance with the CIE-9 CM classification. The Kappa index was used for comparisons.

Ten cases were lost due to missing data. The mean number of diagnoses per patient was 1.48 for 061 teams and was 1.50 in hospital reports. The most common of diagnoses related to injuries and cardiovascular diseases (non-specific diagnoses accounted for approximately 20%). Fifty-nine percent of the patients had at least one diagnosis that coincided. We obtained kappa = 0.478 for a confidence level of 95% (the agreement rate was 73.9%).

Overall agreement was moderate, with better results in the Advanced Coordination Team and conventional ambulance transfer due to the simplicity of the diagnoses. Results classified as "good" were achieved only in the Hospital Costa del Sol, which uses working guidelines similar to those of the Public Health Emergency Service. The percentage of inexact diagnoses was high. Proposals for improvement should range from revising the working methods used to applying new technologies.