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The New Hampshire Trauma Emergency Medical Services Information System, or TEMSIS, covers 85% of the state for all EMS/Ambulance runs, totaling over 150,000 annual runs. Nationally, there are 81 required elements out of 451 total fields. Since 2008, New Hampshire EMS personnel have entered the “work-related” field in those cases where the injured person was picked up at a work place.
The New Hampshire Occupational Health Surveillance Program (OHSP) has been exploring non-traditional avenues to gather work-related injury data, including emergency medical services data. New Hampshire is uniquely suited for this project because, currently, electronic reporting to TEMSIS of data on all ambulance runs is mandatory for all EMS providers and because work-relatedness is determined for each incident responded to and is reported on the run form.
METHODS:
NH TEMSIS data were analyzed to better understand its potential in estimating work related injuries that occurred between 2009 and 2011. This was a descriptive analysis of the data, focusing on incident information, medical information (primary impression, secondary impression, chief complaint, primary symptom), injury information (mechanism of injury), and demographic information (patient age, gender and the incident location type). Data files were prepared by TEMSIS staff from the raw EMS data and entered into an Excel spreadsheet. We then created queries to assess the frequencies of specific outcomes, such as traumatic injury, falls, machinery accidents, motor vehicle accidents, and respiratory disease.
RESULTS:
Preliminary results from one year of data (2009) indicate the most frequent EMS work-related events to be falls, motor vehicle accidents, cut/pierce, and machinery accidents. Respiratory events by primary impression included, asthma, allergic reaction, and inhalation//toxic gas. Results from combined 3 year analysis will be presented.
CONCLUSIONS:
The NH TEMSIS is a useful data source to track work-related injuries and illnesses because it mandates collection of “work-relatedness.” These data are another important source of occupational injury and illness data that can enhance existing state occupational health surveillance systems.