title: Performance measurement in British Helicopter Emergency Medical Services and Australian Air Medical Services.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Performance outcome measures are an essential component of health service improvement. Whereas hospital critical care services have established performance measures, prehospital care services have less well-established outcome measures and this has been identified as a key issue for development. Individual studies examining long-term survival and functional outcome measures have previously been used to evaluate prehospital care delivery. There is no set of standardised patient outcome measures for Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) in the UK or Air Medical Services (AMS) in Australia. The aim of this study is to document the patient outcome measures currently in use within British HEMS and Australian AMS.
  
  
  METHODS
  This is an observational study analysing point prevalence of practice as of November 2009. A structured questionnaire was designed to assess the method of routine patient follow-up, and the timing and nature of applied patient outcome measures.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Full responses were received from 17/21 (81%) British services and 6/7 (86%) Australian services. The overall response rate was 82%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  HEMS in Britain and Australian aeromedical retrieval services do not have uniform patient outcome measures. Services tend not to follow-up patients beyond 24 h post transfer. Patient outcome data are rarely presented to an external organisation and there is no formal data comparison between surveyed services. Services are not satisfied that the data currently being collected reflects the quality of their service.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medical Retrieval Service, City Heliport, 110 Stobcross Road, Glasgow, G3 8QQ, UK. nicksimp2000@yahoo.co.uk
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bartley
authors.forename: Alasdair R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Corfield
authors.forename: Stephen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hearns
mesh_terms: D017732:Air Ambulances / Q000592:standards*; D001315:Australia; D006801:Humans; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom