As violence in Philadelphia continues at a high rate, “scoop-and-run” hospital transports—when a responding police officer takes a gunshot or stabbing victim to a trauma center as quickly as possible—have become a time-tested means for delivering patients to life-saving treatment. Twice as many patients are now brought to trauma centers by police, with survival rates comparable to those transported by EMS professionals, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine who examined five years of data. These findings are published in JAMA Network Open.
“We saw that patients transported by police are often more seriously injured than patients transported by EMS, but after controlling for significant differences between groups, police-transported patients have similar mortality levels,” says the study’s lead author, Jeremy Cannon, the Trauma medical director and section chief of Trauma at Penn Medicine. “This study highlights just how crucial to patient care police have become.”
While most police officers’ roles are typically limited to keeping the peace and solving crime, for approximately 25 years, the Philadelphia Police Department has authorized its officers to quickly transport trauma victims to a trauma center if they feel the situation is dire. A Penn Medicine analysis of data from more than a decade ago found no significant differences between the survival of those with penetrating trauma (gunshots, stab wounds, etc.) who were transported via police or ambulance.
But that study took place before a key change was made to the department’s protocol.
“Since the last study, all patrol officers in the city of Philadelphia were issued tourniquets to control extremity hemorrhage during emergencies,” says the study’s first author, Eric Winter, a medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine. “By giving police officers the ability to quickly manage peripheral bleeding, this tourniquet initiative had the potential to enhance the benefit of rapid police transport to the hospital. We know that Philadelphia’s EMS personnel do an exceptional job, but since there’s an emphasis on having the first available responder move victims as quickly as possible, we felt further analysis was needed to assess the impact of this new policy.”
This story is by Frank Otto. Read more at Penn Medicine News.
