Assessment of the Safety and Effectiveness of Emergency Department STEMI Bypass by Defibrillation-only Emergency Medical Technicians/Primary Care Paramedics

Abstract

Substantial time savings may occur if EMT-Ds/PCPs bypass non-PCI center EDs with only a small predicted increase (about 7 minutes) in the transport time to the PCI center ED. EMT-P/ACP rendezvous does not appear to substantially increase transport time. Given the relatively low occurrence of clinically important events, our findings suggest that EMT-D/PCP bypass to a PCI center ED may be safe and effective for selected STEMI patients.