A pediatric field triage strategy that meets the national policy benchmark of ≥95% sensitivity would likely improve health outcomes but increase heath care costs. Our objective was to compare the cost-effectiveness of current pediatric field triage practices to an alternative field triage strategy that meets the national policy benchmark of ≥95% sensitivity.

We developed a decision-analysis Markov model to compare the outcomes and costs of the two strategies. We used a prospectively collected cohort of 3507 (probability weighted, unweighted n = 2832) injured children transported by 44 emergency medical services (EMS) agencies to 28 trauma and non-trauma centers in the Northwestern United States from 1/1/2011 to 12/31/2011 to derive the alternative field triage strategy and to populate model probability and cost inputs for both strategies. We compared the two strategies by calculating quality adjusted life years (QALYs) and health care costs over a time horizon from the time of injury until death. We set an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio threshold of less than $100,000 per QALY for the alternative field triage to be a cost-effective strategy.

Current pediatric field triage practices had a sensitivity of 87.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] 71.9 to 95.0%) and a specificity of 82.3% (95% CI 81.0 to 83.5%) and the alternative field triage strategy had a sensitivity of 97.3% (95% CI 82.6 to 99.6%) and a specificity of 46.1% (95% CI 43.8 to 48.4%). The alternative field triage strategy would cost $476,396 per QALY gained compared to current pediatric field triage practices and thus would not be a cost-effective strategy. Sensitivity analyses demonstrated similar findings.

Current field triage practices do not meet national policy benchmarks for sensitivity. However, an alternative field triage strategy that meets the national policy benchmark of ≥95% sensitivity is not a cost-effective strategy.