tive and widely available but in many
communities do not consistently reach
the patients who need them. That needs
to change.
People expect a high-quality EMS
system to respond to their emergency,
but few know how their system works or
compares to others. The most frequently
reported performance measures are
training standards, response times and
cardiac arrest resuscitation rates. These
provide only a small picture of how well
a service does, and are not measured
the same way by every organization.
Depending on oversight practices, care in
both opening scenarios could be considered adequate despite the different treatment the patients received.
It is time to draw a line in the sand.
On one side will lie good clinical care,
on the other excuses for bad care. The
following covers what is reasonable for
every community to expect from its EMS
system, and how to measure it.
Response Times
People expect help to arrive quickly
when they call 9-1-1, regardless of the
severity of their emergency. EMS response
times are the most common performance
measure used by agencies, but they say
nothing about how well an illness or injury
is treated after help arrives. Reported
response times can also be misleading.
Services that use the NFPA 1710 standard report the time from when the EMS
vehicle's wheels start moving to when
they stop at the call location. The standard does not measure the 9-1-1 callprocessing time, the time the crew takes
to start responding after being alerted, or
how long it takes to reach the patient after
their vehicle stops.
From the patient's perspective, the
only time that matters is from when the
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