Medical Emergency Datasets Can Improve the Comprehensiveness of Handover Information: A Simulation Study

Access to patients' medical histories can be of vital importance to ensure proper treatment in an emergency. Germany is planning to introduce a medical emergency dataset (MED), accessible through an electronic health card, and comprising important patient information, such as diagnoses, medications, and allergies. This article evaluates the effect of MEDs on the comprehensiveness of a physician's documentation and handover process to the emergency department of a hospital. In 2 randomized, crossover simulation studies, 72 emergency physicians participated in 2 emergency scenarios, either with or without access to an MED. Subsequently, they had to document the key information (pre-existing conditions, medications, and allergies) and hand it over to a fictional hospital. The influence of the MED on the documentation of key information was analyzed using the two-sided Prescott's exact test. Sensitivity analyses adjusting for scenario were conducted. The results show that in scenarios with an MED, documentation of key information in the handover process was more complete. In the first trial, 2 of 3 key items (pre-existing conditions/information and allergies) presented a statistically noticeable difference in scenarios with the MED. The second trial confirmed these results for all key items. The findings indicate that the use of MEDs in emergency care could be beneficial since documentation and handover in scenarios with an MED were superior to current real-world practices. Access to more complete patient information through an MED could help to improve the patient's treatment.