AGGREGATION OF COLLEGIATE BASED EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE PATIENT CARE REPORT DATA INTO A COMPREHENSIVE DATABASE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE

Abstract

Study Objective: The University of Arizona has a collegiate based Emergency Medical Service (CBEMS) which currently does not have a comprehensive database of patient care report (PCR) data available for continuous quality improvement (CQI). Our objective is to aggregate this PCR data into a HIPAA compliant database, with a focus on physiological data. Methods: Our patient care report records were both paper and electronic. The paper PCRs were scanned and datapoints were extracted manually. Data from electronic patient care records (ePCR) were extracted automatically using custom Excel macros.This data set was aggregated in Microsoft Access to create the database. 5% of PCRs from each PCR service were then manually reviewed against their original entries to check for the overall accuracy of the data retrieval. Results: All 5,257 unique PCRs were added to the database. 257 of the PCRs were missing a valid call number or date, and a further 49 PCRs had 7 or more critical fields left empty, for a total of 306 (5.8%) PCRs marked as low fidelity. When accuracy was assessed by manual review, only a single error was observed which was present only in the Zoi PCR files. Conclusion: We were able to successfully aggregate all available PCRs into a comprehensive database. The manual review revealed that while the data collection was imperfect, the error was singular and limited to a single ePCR service. The singular error can be patched out easily due to its consistency. Using simple custom Excel macros in conjunction with limited data entry for data integration is currently very feasible for collegiate emergency medical services.