Emergency Medical Service Systems that Improve Patient Survivability

The goal of emergency medical service (EMS) systems is to save lives. Although EMS systems traditionally deploy their units at fixed locations (i.e., “stations”), this is not necessarily the optimal way to respond when resources are limited. This article summarizes the key issues in defining performance measures, utilizing scarce emergency medical resources, and assessing EMS performance when applying operations research methodologies to EMS systems and explicitly focusing on patient outcomes. This article overviews standards currently used by many EMS systems and proposes several performance measures to use in operations research models for EMS systems. Several areas within EMS system design that could benefit from the application of operations research methodologies are described.

Keywords: EMS systems; computer-aided dispatching systems; survivability model; response time threshold; advanced life support