Small rural emergency services (SRES), unlike larger emergency departments, seldom collect clinical and administrative data about every patient they manage.

Samantha Dawson, Tim Baker, and Scott Salzman studied six SRES that collected this type of detailed data for 12 months.

The SRES were able to collect accurate and mostly complete electronic episode-level data for 12-months with four hours per week of support. This study provides starting data accuracy benchmarks for specific fields collected in SRES and could be used to inform decisions about widespread electronic data collection across these services.

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Dawson SL, Baker T, Salzman S. Small rural emergency services can electronically collect accurate episode-level data: A cross-sectional study. Aust J Rural Health. 2015, Apr;23(2):107-11.