|
|
Journal of The Korean Society of Emergency Medicine 1996;7(3): 337-344. |
| THE AMBULANCE RESPONSE TIME: THE PRESENT STATUS AND THE SHORTENING PLANS |
| Koo Young Jung, Seung Han Lee |
| Department of Emergency Medicine, Ewha University Mokdong Hospital |
|
Published online: September 30, 1996. |
|
|
|
| ABSTRACT |
|
Time is an essential element for Emergency Medical Service Systern(EMSS). The response time is defined as the interval from the time of call receipt to the time of scene arrival. There are several factors that exert an significant effect upon the response time. Those are the access type to EMSS, the road system and the traffic congestion, the shape and the size of the service area, the weather, and the population fluctuations. The goal of 90 percentile ambulance response time for Basic Life Support(BLS) unit and Advanced Life Support(ALS) unit are 4 minutes and 8 minutes respectively in United States. It is essential to know the regional response time and the influencing factors for planning the regional ambulance system and for evaluating the effect of any changes in the system. But there has been no overall evaluation nor any guidelines for the response time in Korea. Therefore, we investigated the status of ambulance response time and analyzed the influencing factors by interpretating 3510 records of ambulance run of one week period from 204 fire brigades all over the country.
The mean ambulance response time is 6.2±3.3 minutes and 90% of ambulances arrived at scene
within 10.6 minutes. Overall the response times were getting delayed from large-urban to rural area gradually. We could have confirm that the most important factor in both of urban and rural area was moving distance of ambulance. We could suggest that the interim goal of 90 percentile ambulance response time is 4 minutes in Seoul, 6 minutes in five large-urban area and urbanized rural area, i.e., Gyeong-sangnamdo and Gyeonggido, and 8 minutes in most rural area with the exception of 10 minutes in mountainous area, i.e., Gyeongsangbukdo & Gangwondo. But the 90 percentile ambulance response time must be 4minutes and 8minutes for BLS unit and ALS unit ultimately. To accomplish the above goals,
we should be consider the optimization of service area for each unit through increasing the vehicle and choosing the convenient location
|
| Key words:
EMSS(Emergency Medical Service System), Response time, Traffic congestion |
|
|
|
PDF Links
Full text via DOI 
Download Citation 
