Emergency Medical Services Delivery Research Articles

Computer Modeling of Rural Emergency Medical Services Delivery Systems

RURALSIM is a sophisticated computer simulation model designed as an aid in planning and evaluating rural emergency medical services (EMS) systems. Written in SIMULA, it has been successfully used in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, to study the potential effects of changes in existing vehicle placement and relocation strategies, vehicle dispatching policies and alternative forms of prehospital care, including the ability of the system to respond to a disaster.RURALSIM is a stochastic, dynamic, event-oriented computer model. Stochastic means that all random events, such as the occurrence of an incident, are generated according to appropriate probability distributions obtained from empirical data. Dynamic means that events occur over time and that the model selects the appropriate incident rates and response strategies for the particular time and day simulated.

Emergency medical services, 1979.

Improved patient care can result from changes in the organization and delivery of care as well as from new drugs and surgical techniques. Witness, for example, the dramatic changes that have occurred in the delivery of emergency medical services over the past five years.HistoryIn 1966, the National Academy of Sciences published its landmark study, "Accidental Death and Disability: The neglected disease of modern society."1 The study labeled this "neglected epidemic" the leading cause of death in children and young adults and the nation's most important environmental health problem. Although the academy focused attention on failures in the civilian . . .

Medical Care in the Streets

AN EMERGENCY medical services delivery system is as strong as its weakest link. 1,2 As data on acute myocardial infarction and multiple trauma have been accumulated over the past several years, it has become clear that a considerable portion of morbidity and mortality occurs outside the hospital, before the patient reaches medical care. 3 It has similarly become clear that implementation of high standards of advanced prehospital life support—at the scene and in transport—can improve the outcome of critically ill and injured patients, thus reducing the need for prolonged, often futile, terminal intensive care. Because of increasing awareness of these facts, the past several years have seen a burgeoning of paramedicstaffed mobile intensive care units (MICUs), equipped to deliver sophisticated medical care on the scene for a variety of medical and surgical emergencies. Advanced emergency medical technicians, or paramedics, are trained in arrhythmia recognition, administration of medications, intravenous infusion, endotracheal