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Journal of The Korean Society of Emergency Medicine 1995;6(1): 15-21. |
| REGIONALIZATION AND CATEGORIZATION OF EMERGENCY CARE FACILITIES |
| Koo Young Jung, Seung Han Lee |
| Department of Emergency Medicine, Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital |
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Published online: June 30, 1995. |
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| ABSTRACT |
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Emergency medical service systems ( EMSS ) has just been started in Korea with legislative effort of Emergency Medical Act since 1991. But there are many defects in the systems as well as in the quality of care. One of the main reasons of these defects is that the hospitals have never been regionalized and have been categorized ineffectively. Therefore we estimated the involving area for each emergency facility, which can make possible to design the regionalization. We also investigated the facilities, personnels and the equipments of the emergency departments(EDs) of 5 hospitals in a million population area. One was emergency center of tertiary 500 bed-sized hospital, two EDs in 140 bed-sized hospitals and two EDs in 80 bed-sized hospitals.
There were no significant differences between 140 and 80 bed-sized hospitals in equipments and personnels, but all of those were far beyond the legal standard. Number of ED patients were also similar. Seventy to eighty percentage of the patients visited to emergency center from 5km-radius area and to EDs from 2km-radius area. The distribution patterns of patients were almost same for EDs of 140 and 80 bed-sized hospitals. Therefore, on e emergency center might be enough for one million population and one ED for 200,000, in regard to population density.
In conclusion, one million population area can be regionalized as an EMSS, which may have one emergency center and five general EDs. ED should be designated not according to hospital size, but its own capacity to handle the emergent patients.
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| Key words:
EMSS, Regionalization, Categorization |
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