Can the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) System Help in Improving the Healthcare Access - Evidence from Maharashtra EMS.

Abstract

For many people in the remote regions of India, medical help is inaccessible as 66% of rural Indians do not have access to critical medicine and 31% of the population travel more than 30 km seeking health care in rural India. Timely non-availability of doctors in healthcare facilities, especially in primary health centers (PHCs), leads to more dependency on the private healthcare practitioners for the out-patient department services. This needs immediate attention. The healthcare authority in Maharashtra has allowed doctors in 108 emergency ambulances to provide consulting services. The current study is based on the total consultations managed by the doctors on-board on the 108 ambulances in the state of Maharashtra in the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. The data are procured from the state-run Emergency Response Centre, and the analysis is done by using the basic statistical technique in MS Excel and SPSS16.0. More than 9.35 lakh medical consultations were provided with an average 856 consultations per ambulance in the year 2022, showing a significant growth of 452% over the consultations in 2020. The base location of the 32% ambulance (298) in the PHCs has improved the round the clock accessibility in 16% of the total PHCs in the state of Maharashtra. The availability of the doctors in the state-run emergency ambulances for general healthcare services has improved the adherence of Indian Public Health Standards, and such practice must be examined for implementation in other states.