Statistical Approaches to Modeling EMS Response Time: A Michigan Case Study

The response time is a crucial element of Emergency Medical Services (EMS). However, there is neither federal nor state laws in place to regulate EMS response times, thus standards are set by individual vendors or local organizations. The question is “How does an organization benchmark its performance with respect to the other organizations?” This knowledge may help an organization to further discoveries, innovations, and potentially identify best practice. This in turn will improve the existing system used by EMS leading to quicker access to care for the end users (the crash victims), which could save numerous human lives. This study reports the data analysis of the EMS agency data on traffic crash responses in the State of Michigan. NEMSIS data provided for 2010 through 2015 was used to conduct statistical analyses and develop predictive models. The preliminary model generated in this study could be utilized to help evaluate and compare the performance of EMS agencies, where a response time may be required to fall within the 68%, 95%, or 99.7% time intervals as an agreed-upon performance criterion. In addition, the probability distribution function and the cumulative distribution function of this statistical distribution can be used to predict and summarize response times. The results from the analyses will be useful to provide recommendations to help guide and direct future EMS initiatives relating to motor vehicle crashes.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABC20 Standing Committee on Management and Productivity.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Kumar, Anil R
  • Butt, Steven
  • Abudayyeh, Osama
  • Fredericks, Tycho
  • Kuk, Megan
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 14p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Emergency medical services; Emergency response time; Performance measurement; Statistical analysis; Traffic crashes
• Identifier Terms: National EMS Information System (NEMSIS)
• Geographic Terms: Michigan
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01622792
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-01431
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 20 2017 9:06AM