Accuracy of prehospital diagnoses by emergency physicians: comparison with discharge diagnosis.

OBJECTIVE: A correct prehospital diagnosis of emergency patients is crucial as it determines initial treatment, admitting specialty, and subsequent treatment. We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of emergency physicians. METHODS: All patients seen by six emergency physicians staffing the local emergency ambulance and rescue helicopter services during an 8-month period were studied. The ambulance and helicopter physicians had 3 and 4 years, respectively, training in anesthesia and intensive care medicine. The admission diagnoses were compared with the discharge diagnoses for agreement. Time of day of the emergency call, patients' age, and sex, living conditions, and presenting symptoms were evaluated as contributing factors. RESULTS: Three hundred and fifty-five ambulance and 241 helicopter deployment protocols were analyzed. The overall degree of agreement between initial and discharge diagnoses was 90.1% with no difference attributable to years of experience. The lowest agreement rate was seen in neurological disorders (81.5%), with a postictal state after an unobserved seizure often being diagnosed as a cerebrovascular accident. Inability to obtain a complete medical history (e.g. elderly patients, patients in nursing homes, neurological impairment) was associated with a lower agreement rate between initial and discharge diagnoses (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: Medical history, physical examination, ECG, and blood glucose enabled a correct diagnosis in most cases, but some were impossible to resolve without further technical and laboratory investigations. Only a few were definitively incorrect. A detailed medical history is essential. Neurological disorders can present with misleading symptoms and when the diagnosis is not clear it is better to assume the worst case.

A German national prevalence study on the cost of intensive care: an evaluation from 51 intensive care units.

INTRODUCTION: Intensive care unit (ICU) costs account for up to 20% of a hospital's costs. We aimed to analyse the individual patient-related cost of intensive care at various hospital levels and for different groups of disease. METHODS: Data from 51 ICUs all over Germany (15 primary care hospitals and 14 general care hospitals, 10 maximal care hospitals and 12 focused care hospitals) were collected in an observational, cross-sectional, one-day point prevalence study by two external study physicians (January-October 2003). All ICU patients (length of stay > 24 hours) treated on the study day were included. The reason for admission, severity of illness, surgical/diagnostic procedures, resource consumption, ICU/hospital length of stay, outcome and ICU staffing structure were documented. RESULTS: Altogether 453 patients were included. ICU (hospital) mortality was 12.1% (15.7%). The reason for admission and the severity of illness differed between the hospital levels of care, with a higher amount of unscheduled surgical procedures and patients needing mechanical ventilation in maximal care hospital and focused care hospital facilities. The mean total costs per day were euro 791 +/- 305 (primary care hospitals, euro 685 +/- 234; general care hospitals, euro 672 +/- 199; focused care hospitals, euro 816 +/- 363; maximal care hospitals, euro 923 +/- 306), with the highest cost in septic patients (euro 1,090 +/- 422). Differences were associated with staffing, the amount of prescribed drugs/blood products and diagnostic procedures. CONCLUSION: The reason for admission, the severity of illness and the occurrence of severe sepsis are directly related to the level of ICU cost. A high fraction of costs result from staffing (up to 62%). Specialized and maximum care hospitals treat a higher proportion of the more severely ill and most expensive patients.