[Characteristics of repeated emergency physician use]

Repeated use of emergency physicians might result in excessive costs and has discouraging effects on emergency department staff. To our knowledge, no data are available on the characteristic of repeated use of emergency physicians (EP) in the German emergency medical services. Accordingly, this retrospective survey focused on emergency cases on-the-scene, which necessitated EP intervention.

Following data from the local EMS computerised database (Medlinq, EASY, Hamburg, Germany) were retrospectively analysed for the period from January to December of 2002: total number of EP interventions, person who engaged the emergency call, number of repeat EP-users with two to three calls, number of frequent EP-users with more than three calls, their sex, age, NACA. Probably inappropriate repeat users were defined as patients with no apparent underlying distress on-the-scene, lack of preclinical findings which could explain the symptoms initially mentioned, and refuse of hospital referral by the patient. The rate of repeated inappropriate EP use was defined as the ratio of the number of repeated inappropriate use over the total number of EP-engagements in the year 2002.

6064 EP interventions were analysed. The rate of the repeated use was 15.5 % (939/6064) including 3.6 % (218/6064) frequent users. The main medical causes (80 %) of repeated EP use were cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory, and psychiatric. The rate of repeated inappropriate EP use was 0.2 % (11/6064).

The rate of repeated inappropriate EP use in this middle sized town was low. More than four fifths of all repeated calls were for cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, and psychiatric distress.