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Comilla Sasson, MD

911 Emergency Communication Nurse Triage Reduces EMS Patient Costs and Directs Patients to High-Satisfaction Alternative Point of Care

Isabel Gardett, PhD, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Jeff J. Clawson, MD, Kristen Miller, JD, Neal Richmond, MD, FACEP, Comilla Sasson, MD, Matt Zavadsky, MS, Mark Rector, Andrew Wilcox, Christopher Olola, PhD

Mar 22, 2015|AEDR 2015 Vol. 3 Issue 1|Original Research

Recent estimates indicate that more than half of all Emergency Department (ED) visits could be avoided, reducing patient costs and increasing satisfaction with care. Since 911 is increasingly the first point of contact for many patients entering the health care system—even those with non-emergency conditions—one potential approach to decreasing emergency costs and ED overcrowding is to reinvent the 911 dispatch center as a clearinghouse for directing patients to alternative care providers. This study presents a cost avoidance analysis of two 911 dispatch centers that...

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A Novel Approach to Understanding Small Area Variation Within Communities by Using Computer-Assisted Dispatch (CAD) Data

Comilla Sasson, MD

Mar 01, 2013|AEDR 2013 Vol. 1 Issue 1|

Geographic variation in the incidence of time sensitive conditions (e.g. myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke) in the United States has been described by the Centers for Disease Control. These annual estimates of stroke and MI mortality by both state and county are based on data from national administrative datasets (e.g. Medicare and National Vital Statistics). For example, in Colorado, acute MI deaths by county can vary from 10.7/100,000 people to 148.7/100,000 people, almost a 14-fold difference. Although these county level variations are large, there is no data on how acute MI mortality...

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