Observational studyBMC emergency medicine2020
Helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) activity after increased distance to out-of-hours services: an observational study from Norway.
Observational study in BMC emergency medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cleared to land? A nationwide analysis of emergency care hospital and HEMS infrastructure in Germany.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Optimizing remote and rural prehospital resources using air transport of thrombectomy candidates.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Review
- Acute medical missions by helicopter medical service (HEMS) to municipalities with different approach for primary care physicians.BMC emergency medicine · 2022Observational
- Challenges of prehospital aerial operations in response to earthquake hazards: A qualitative study.Journal of education and health promotion · 2022Article
- Helicopter emergency medical services missions to islands and the mainland during a 3-year period in Denmark: a population-based study on patient and sociodemographic characteristics, comorbidity, and use of healthcare services.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOrganizational changes in out-of-hour (OOH) services may have unintended consequences for other prehospital services. Reports indicate an increased use of helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) after changes in OOH services in Norway due to greater geographical distances for the on-call doctors. We investigated whether HEMS dispatches increased when nine municipalities in Sogn og Fjordane County merged into one large inter-municipal OOH district.
methodsAll primary dispatches of the HEMS in the county between 2004 and 2013 were included. We applied interrupted time series regression to monthly aggregated data to evaluate the impact of the organizational change 1 April 2009. The nine target municipalities were compared to the rest of the municipalities in the county, which served as a control group. A quasipoisson model adjusted for seasonality was found to be most applicable.
resultsWe included 8,751 dispatches, 5,009 (57.2%) of which were completed with a patient encounter. Overall, we found no alteration in requests for HEMS after 2009 (p = 0.251). Separate analyses of the target municipalities and control group revealed no significant increase after 2009 (p = 0.400 and p = 0.056, respectively). When categorizing the municipalities into urban or rural, we found a general increase in HEMS dispatches for the rural group over the 10-year span (p = 0.045) but no added increase after 2009 (p = 0.502). The urban subgroup showed no change. Distance from the OOH service in regards to travel increased within the nine municipalities after 2009, median [quartiles] (5.0[3.0, 6.2] km vs 26.5[5.0, 62.2] km, p < 0.001).
conclusionAfter relocating nine local OOH services into one large inter-municipal OOH district, we found no increase in requests for HEMS.
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