Emergency medical services delivery performance based on real map

Abstract

Performance of emergency medical services delivery is normally benchmarked via ambulance response time. Quick ambulance response can efficiently reduce the disability and mortality of emergency patients. Ambulance dispatch policy and location model both have a significant impact on the response time. A proper dispatch policy can determine the right ambulance for the incoming emergency call. Meanwhile, the use of location model can increase the ambulance coverage. Nevertheless, the applications of both dispatch policy and location model are yet to be seen in Malaysia ambulance services. There is also a lack of academic contributions focusing on a simulation study of emergency medical services in Malaysia, especially those using local geographic information. In this research, a simulation framework is presented to study the response time performance of a simulation model that consists of both the dispatch policy and location model. Several real-life dispatch policies were simulated in a real map by using actual geographic information to evaluate the efficiency of ambulance services in Johor Bahru. By using a suitable dispatch policy, the simulation results show an improvement in average response time for higher-priority call while the total covered calls have increased significantly with the application of maximal covering location problem. At nine ambulances, the achieved maximum coverage is 68% for using the location model compared to merely 45% prior to the implementation.