Description of the 2024 NEMSIS Public-Release Research Dataset

The National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) is a federally funded program that provides a standardized national framework for collecting and aggregating prehospital care data across the United States (U.S). The 2024 Public-Release Research Dataset is a recent compilation of emergency medical services (EMS) activations for evaluating public health surveillance, patient characteristics, and various EMS systems and patient care improvement initiatives.

Using the 2024 NEMSIS Public-Release Research Dataset (NEMSIS Dataset), we analyze the dataset for completeness (i.e., presence of missing/null values), dataset content, and assess data generalizability. The analyses concentrate on 9-1-1 EMS responses that led to both treatment and transport of a patient, including all out-of-hospital cardiac arrest cases.

In 2024, 60,298,684 EMS activations were reported to the National EMS Database by 14,756 agencies serving 50 US states, D.C., and four territories. The majority of the 24.9 million 9-1-1 patient treated and transported activations were serviced by non-volunteer EMS services, mostly in urban areas. The most frequently reported patient complaints and impressions were for general medical concerns. Analysis of Ambulance Patient Offload Times (APOT) demonstrated expected variation by patient acuity.

The 2024 National EMS Public-Release Research Dataset serves as an open-access tool for examining EMS usage patterns, response metrics, prehospital care practices, and patient outcomes. Though a near-complete census, users must account for its known limitations. Familiarity with the available documentation regarding NEMSIS version 3.5.0 will aid in addressing these limitations and the various metrics that are generated from the use of the 2024 NEMSIS Public-Release Dataset.