Pediatric emergency transport and the private practitioner

A mail survey of 182 pediatricians and 92 family practitioners in Pennsylvania was conducted to determine their methods of transport of seriously ill children from their offices to referral centers and their involvement with professional transport services. Although most physicians (93.1%) stated that they had professional services available to them (at their office location), more than half (53.8%) indicated that the patient's family automobile was their most commonly used method of transport of ill children to tertiary care centers. This was true regardless of the disease entity involved, including suspected epiglottitis. Practice setting had little influence on transport method. However, in general, younger children were judged to need ambulance transport more often than older children. Reasons cited for not using professional transport from the office included a perceived better efficiency of the family car (61.8%), the prohibitively high expense of professional transport (9.8%), and failure to consider professional transport (6.5%). Further study of this component of office preparedness is suggested.