Is Use Of An Interactive Voice Server In An Emergency Medical Dispatch Center An Efficient And Safe Measure?

ABSTRACT

Introduction: In the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic, Emergency Medical Dispatch Centers (EMDC) faced an influx of calls. During this time, with the scope of handling emergency calls more quickly, it was decided to use an Interactive Voice Server (IVS). The objective of this study was to identify whether the implementation of an IVS is efficient and safe. Method(s) From 20/03/19 until 20/04/26, an IVS was activated between 8 AM and midnight. IVS offered the caller to choose either 1-press the 'zero' key for Coronavirus Syndrome with no respiratory difficulties;or 2-stay on line for any other reason. If the caller typed 'zero', the call was directed to a 'crisis dispatcher' specially trained to handle COVID cases. If he stayed on line, his call was placed in the same queueing list as all emergency calls and handled by a "conventional dispatcher". All medical dispatch files picked up during IVS activation period were included and classified in 2 groups "IVS Yes" if caller pressed 'zero' and "IVS No" if not. Patient's age, gender and profile of the caller (patient or third party) were collected. The level of severity of the patients was assessed upon the dispatcher' decision ranging from sending an Advanced Life Support ambulance (ALS), a Basic Life Support ambulance (BLS) or no transport. Data were compared between the 2 groups with Chi-square tests. Result(s) 2846 callers were in the group "IVS Yes" and 12111 in "IVS No". Main results are in table 1. Conclusion(s) IVS allowed almost 15% of calls to be directed to a specialized provider where they waited to be processed by staff trained within a few days to deal exclusively with COVID cases. This has led to decrease the number of calls handled by the conventional dispatch and allowed more time to respond to severe emergency calls. Moreover, because only 0.07% "IVS Yes" needed an ALS ambulance, we can assume that the use of IVS is safe. IVS is therefore an effective tool, which allows safe triage of less serious patients and frees up time to answer to severe calls.