Time-to-dispatch in a 911 center continues to be a topic of much discussion in public safety. This study represents a first attempt to classify a subset of time-todispatch, call prioritization time, the time required to gather critical information prior to dispatching the call. The study characterizes call prioritization time in two Police dispatching agencies by determining overall median call prioritization time for all Chief Complaints (CCs) in the agencies studied, then by determining specific call prioritization times for the top five most commonly-used CCs...
This study examined the distribution of the MPDS® Chief Complaint protocols and determinant codes assigned by the EMD as eligible for nurse triage, as well as the distribution of the Chief Complaint protocols contained in the Emergency Communications Nurse System™ (ECNS™) secondary nurse triage process, as determined by the emergency communications nurse (ECN). Protocol distribution was also examined by patient gender. This study characterized protocol and gender distributions to provide a better understanding of the types of patients and their associated...
Diabetes mellitus is a leading cause of human disease, with 25.8 million Americans affected. It is estimated that 7 million (27%) of these patients are still formally undiagnosed. Diabetes can cause chronic or sudden signs and symptoms, which often result in observers calling 911 for assistance. The Emergency Dispatcher's interpretation of these calls affects dispatch triage and pre-arrival patient care. To determine the relationship between the EMDs' assigned Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) determinant codes and patient severity indicators as determined by paramedic (or EMT) on-scene...
Emergency dispatch is a relatively new field, but the growth of dispatching as a profession, along with raised expectations for help before responders arrive, has led to increased production of and interest in emergency dispatch research. As yet, no systematic review of dispatch research has been conducted. This study reviewed the existing literature and indicated gaps in the research as well as potentially fruitful extensions of current lines of study. Dispatch-related terms were used to search for papers in research databases (including PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, EMCARE, SciSearch, PsychInfo...
911 centers receive a wide variety of calls for police-related incidents. Using the Police Priority Dispatch System (PPDS®), a 911 Emergency Police Dispatcher (EPD) categorizes each incident with a specific Chief Complaint (CC) and prioritizes the case using a systematic alpha-numeric coding matrix. The wide variation in CC types and specific codes assigned can profoundly affect staffing and resource deployment decisions made by law enforcement agencies. However, the frequency of specific call types and priority levels in the PPDS has not been studied formally to date. The objective of...
In an effort to improve efficiency and prioritization of its 911 police calls, the City of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, implemented the Police Priority Dispatch System (PPDS) in its 911 center on March 1st, 2023. After a year of usage, call-processing time and call prioritization efficiency were compared to the previously used system.
Most United Kingdom (UK) ambulance services undertake remote clinical consultation of 999 emergency calls, often using computerised decision support systems, such as the Emergency Communication Nurse System (ECNS). In 2021 the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust implemented ECNS in a novel way. Both nurses and paramedics used the tool to assess the full range of Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System (AMPDS) codes and acuities. This study reports the ECNS outcomes of the full range of AMPDS codes, aiming to inform future discussion, protocol evolution, and clinical models internationally.
In June 2025, the York County 911 Center, York, PA, received a call from the wife of a 75-year-old male, described as not feeling well and having just fallen off the toilet. Upon initial Case Entry questioning by the Emergency Medical Dispatcher (EMD), the patient was described as “awake” and “breathing.” Within a few seconds of these responses, the caller rechecked the patient and changed her response to “He was a minute ago” (regarding consciousness), then, after a brief pause said, “He’s unconscious at the moment.”
In a recent study (see below poster), the Montgomery County Hospital District EMS service found that the Medical Priority Dispatch System’s Stroke Diagnostic Tool (SDxT) was able to identify true strokes—those confirmed by the receiving hospital—with a high degree of sensitivity and a comparable specificity to the face-to-face paramedic-initiated stroke activation (PISA).
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 57.8 million Americans were estimated to have a mental illness in 2021—a cohort that represents 22.8% of all adults in the U.S. The same report estimates that 14.1 million of them have a condition defined as Severe Mental Illness (SMI), equaling 5.5% of U.S. adults.
