Manca, Francesco and Lewsey, Jim and Waterson, Ryan and Kernaghan, Sarah M and Fitzpatrick, David and Mackay, Daniel and Angus, Colin and Fitzgerald, Niamh (2021) Estimating the burden of alcohol on ambulance callouts through development and validation of an algorithm using electronic patient records. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18, (12), 6363. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126363.
External website: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/12/6363
Background: Alcohol consumption places a significant burden on emergency services, including ambulance services, which often represent patients’ first, and sometimes only, contact with health services. We aimed to (1) improve the assessment of this burden on ambulance services in Scotland using a low-cost and easy to implement algorithm to screen free-text in electronic patient record forms (ePRFs), and (2) present estimates on the burden of alcohol on ambulance callouts in Scotland.
Methods: Two paramedics manually reviewed 5416 ePRFs to make a professional judgement of whether they were alcohol-related, establishing a gold standard for assessing our algorithm performance. They also extracted all words or phrases relating to alcohol. An automatic algorithm to identify alcohol-related callouts using free-text in EPRs was developed using these extracts.
Results: Our algorithm had a specificity of 0.941 and a sensitivity of 0.996 in detecting alcohol-related callouts. Applying the algorithm to all callout records in Scotland in 2019, we identified 86,780 (16.2%) as alcohol-related. At weekends, this percentage was 18.5%.
Conclusions: Alcohol-related callouts constitute a significant burden on the Scottish Ambulance Service. Our algorithm is significantly more sensitive than previous methods used to identify alcohol-related ambulance callouts. This approach and the resulting data have potential for the evaluation of alcohol policy interventions as well as for conducting wider epidemiological research
A Substance use and dependence > Prevalence > Substance use behaviour > Alcohol consumption
A Substance use and dependence > Substance related societal (social) problems
B Substances > Alcohol
G Health and disease > Substance use disorder (addiction) > Alcohol use disorder > Alcohol intoxication
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Type of care > Emergency care
MP-MR Policy, planning, economics, work and social services > Policy > Policy on substance use > Harm reduction policy
VA Geographic area > Europe > United Kingdom > Scotland
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