Publications by authors named "K R B Sporer"
Importance: Ambulance offload delays are a timely and crucial issue with implications for patients, emergency medical services (EMS) agencies, hospitals, and communities. Published data on recent patterns in ambulance patient offload times (APOTs) are sparse.
Objective: To examine patterns in APOT by California local EMS agency and variation between and within local agencies.
Article Synopsis
- Minoritized youth in under-resourced neighborhoods often depend on emergency medical services (EMS) for care during behavioral health emergencies (BHEs), but law enforcement (LE) may use forceful methods during these situations.
- A study in Alameda County, California, investigated the factors like race, ethnicity, neighborhood disadvantage, sex, and age that are linked to LE handcuffing during pediatric BHEs between 2012 and 2019.
- Results showed that handcuffing occurred in 7.6% of pediatric BHE encounters, with Black children and those from neighborhoods with moderate to high disadvantage facing significantly higher odds of being handcuffed compared to their peers.
Background: Point-of-care electroencephalography (EEG) devices can be rapidly applied and do not require specialized technologists, creating new opportunities to use EEG during prehospital care. We evaluated the feasibility of point-of-care EEG during ambulance transport for 911 calls.
Methods: This mixed-methods study was conducted between May 28, 2022 and October 28, 2023.
Objectives: Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) is a system used to assign medical 9-1-1 calls to one of 35 chief complaints that are further categorized in order of increasing priority, Alpha through Echo. In this descriptive study we demonstrate the methodology of matching MPDS codes to a county mortality registry. We also evaluated the ability of select MPDS codes (fall, respiratory, sick person, and abdominal pain) to predict mortality up to 30 d for all ages transported by Alameda County Emergency Medical Services (EMS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Emergency medical services (EMS) transport for mental and behavioral health (MBH) emergencies occurs frequently in children, yet little is understood regarding prehospital physical restraint use despite the potential for serious adverse events. We aim to describe restraint use prevalence and primary impressions among children with MBH emergencies.
Methods: This is a retrospective cross-sectional study of children with MBH emergencies evaluated by Alameda County (ALCO), California EMS from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2018.