Comparison of dispatching after motor vehicle accidents - effects of the TPS-eCall system on dispatching time.

Abstract

Background/objectives: Over the past 50 years, the concept of the golden hour of shock was established as one of the central tenets of emergency trauma medicine. A shorter duration of prehospital care correlates with a positive change in outcome in numerous studies. Dispatching by the public safety answering points has hardly been discussed to date. Thanks to improved vehicle safety, additional accident data is now available to the emergency call centers.

Methods: We investigated the effects of third-party system emergency calls (TPS-eCalls), which have become mandatory in new passenger cars in the EU in 2018, on dispatching in the emergency medical services (EMS). For this purpose, we linked the data of a public-safety answering point (PSAP) and an EMS. All emergency service deployments from 01/01/2023 to 31/12/2023 were evaluated. N = 1546 rescue missions were dispatched after motor vehicle accidents (MVA), 111 after TPS-eCall-alerts, 1435 after conventional alerts.

Results: Dispatching in the PSAP currently took longer after TPS-eCall alerts than conventional alerts (01:39 ± 01:40 min vs. 02:41 ± 02:01 min, p ≤ 0.001). The differences were only significant in the case of accidents involving ≤ 2 passengers.

Conclusions: TPS-eCall data will be available increasingly. The future expansion data availability offers the opportunity to include objective accident data (airbag deployment, number of occupants, change of velocity) in the dispatching process. Adequate technical connection can improve dispatching and shorten preclinical treatment, especially for complex events with more than 2 passengers.