Netherlands Triage Standard

The NTS correctly identified nearly all major events and all ACS cases in the analysed group. High sensitivity was considered clinically important for NTS in telephone triage because missed urgent cases are riskier than unnecessary urgent referral. The current NTS protocol's high sensitivity remained a critical advantage in telephone triage. The NTS protocol produces urgency codes from U1 to U5, with U1 and U2 treated as high urgency requiring care within 60 minutes. The main disadvantage of NTS was low specificity and high false positive rates. The NTS chest pain protocol was the comparator standard used during routine telephone triage.