Rural and Ethnic Disparities in Out-of-hospital Care and Transport Pathways After Road Traffic Trauma in New Zealand.

Introduction: The out-of-hospital emergency medical service (EMS) care responses and the transport pathways to hospital play a vital role in patient survival following injury and are the first component of a well-functioning, optimised system of trauma care. Despite longstanding challenges in delivering equitable healthcare services in the health system of Aotearoa-New Zealand (NZ), little is known about inequities in EMS-delivered care and transport pathways to hospital-level care.
Methods: This population-level cohort study on out-of-hospital care, based on national EMS data, included trauma patients <85 years in age who were injured in a road traffic crash (RTC). In this study we examined the combined relationship between ethnicity and geographical location of injury in EMS out-of-hospital care and transport pathways following RTCs in Aotearoa-NZ. Analyses were stratified by geographical location of injury (rural and urban) and combined ethnicity-geographical location (rural Māori, rural non-Māori, urban Māori, and urban non-Māori).
Results: In a two-year period, there were 746 eligible patients; of these, 692 were transported to hospital. Indigenous Māori comprised 28% (196) of vehicle occupants attended by EMS, while 47% (324) of patients' injuries occurred in a rural location. The EMS transport pathways to hospital for rural patients were slower to reach first hospital (total in slowest tertile of time 44% vs 7%, P  ≥ 0.001) and longer to reach definitive care (direct transport, 77% vs 87%, P  = 0.001) compared to urban patients. Māori patients injured in a rural location were comparatively less likely than rural non-Māori to be triaged to priority transport pathways (fastest dispatch triage, 92% vs 97%, respectively, P  = 0.05); slower to reach first hospital (total in slowest tertile of time, 55% vs 41%, P  = 0.02); and had less access to specialist trauma care (reached tertiary trauma hospital, 51% vs 73%, P  = 0.02).
Conclusion: Among RTC patients attended and transported by EMS in NZ, there was variability in out-of-hospital EMS transport pathways through to specialist trauma care, strongly patterned by location of incident and ethnicity. These findings, mirroring other health disparities for Māori, provide an equity-focused evidence base to guide clinical and policy decision makers to optimize the delivery of EMS care and reduce disparities associated with out-of-hospital EMS care.
Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. This project is funded by a Health Research Council of New Zealand project grant (HRC 18/465). There are no other conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare.