Quality in Physician-Led Dispatch: Criteria and Evaluation

The French emergency medical communication center, called "Samu Centre 15", is subject to a quality policy that responds to a transversal approach, taking into account the patient, the professional, and the health establishment. The quality approach ensures that each patient has access to an emergency medical communication center anywhere on the territory and can obtain a fair and appropriate response to all requests for urgent or unscheduled care. For the professionals of the "Samu Centre 15", quality in regulation allows them to improve and secure their practices in a context of constantly increasing demand in recent years. It is to ensure optimal working conditions for the operators and, therefore, to contribute to a quality response for the callers. This approach is also part of the certification of health establishments by the French National Authority for Health and integrates with the concept of "magnetic" hospitals, which combine high-performance health results with caring working conditions for caregivers. The continuous quality improvement strategy must be based on a study applied to emergency medical communication centers, which should be developed. Drawing on methods used in other emergency call processing systems and integrating new tools within "Samu Centre 15" could help achieve this quality objective.