THURSDAY, Dec. 21, 2023 (HealthDay News) — From 2019 to 2020, one in 10 emergency medical services (EMS) encounters for children were for behavioral health, according to a study published online Nov. 10 in Academic Emergency Medicine.
Julia H. Wnorowska, from Northwestern University in Chicago, and colleagues sought to describe demographic, clinical, and EMS system characteristics of pediatric behavioral health EMS encounters in the United States. The analysis included 309,442 pediatric (younger than 18 years) behavioral health EMS encounters (2019 to 2020) identified through the National Emergency Medical Services Information System.
The researchers found that behavioral health accounted for 11.3 percent of pediatric EMS encounters, with 85.2 percent of patients aged 12 to 17 years. Just over half of patients (57.3 percent) were female, and most encounters (86.6 percent) occurred in urban areas. Sedative medications and physical restraints were used in 2.2 and 3.0 percent of these encounters, respectively. Sedative medication use was associated with the presence of developmental, communication, or physical disabilities (adjusted odds ratio, 3.38). Physical restraint use was associated with encounters by patients ages 6 to 11 years (adjusted odds ratio, 1.35) compared with those aged 12 to 17 years.
“Regional variation suggests opportunities may be available to standardize documentation and care practices during pediatric behavioral health EMS encounters,” the authors write.
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