Are The Laws Sufficient Enough To Change The Practice?

Abstract

Study Objectives: The medical transportation of patients among the health care facilities serves a vital function in the integration and utilization of the health care system. “Emergency Health Services Regulations” have been executed by the Ministry of Health in 2000 and the principles of interhospital patient transfer were described for the first time. Studies done before this act showed that interhospital patient transfers were not appropriate. The aim of this study is to determine the compliance with the law and changes in the patterns of patient transfers to our tertiary university medical center before and after the regulations.
Methods: In this prospective, cross-sectional observational study, data on patients transferred to Akdeniz University Hospital Emergency Department between July 01, 2002 and July 31, 2002 were compared with the data of the prior study done before the regulations.
Results: During the study period, 220 patients aged over 15 were transferred to our hospital, and no statistically significant difference was found with the results of 116 patients of the prior study according to age and gender. Pretransfer phone contact occurred only 10.9% of the time and there was no difference with the results obtained before the public act. The rate of sending transfer notes decreased to 61.8% from 84.5% and the prescription papers were found to be the most preferred transfer note papers. Only six of the 40 hospitals have printed transfer forms, however it was determined that these printed forms were not filled-in and sent with every patients transferred from these six hospitals.
Conclusions: Laws and regulations relevant to the medical services will help to improve the health care system; however it is seen that making regulations is not sufficient enough. Interoperability of and the compliance with the laws and regulations should be continuously evaluated and the processes should be improved.