The Myth of Rural EMS = long transports

mikeward

Forum Crew Member
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So I've heard a lot of times, both in person and online, that urban EMS is basically five-minute rides and every rural call is hours long. I've worked both. Truth is, most "urban" calls run at least ten-fifteen minutes at least of transport, and most rural calls are quite close to the rural hospital. Just food for thought.
I have worked and been the boss of both types of systems.

As mentioned by others, rural populations tend to cluster around the town center where the hospital is. In one multi-county regional ems service both the rural and the suburban initial response times were similar - within 8 minutes for most calls.

In the rural county about 12% of the 9-1-1 calls took more than 15 minutes due to the travel time over narrow roads in the remote sections of the county. Longest response was 45 minutes.

There are two rural time killers:
1) Transporting from the community hospital to a regional hospital.
For this county a 3.5 hour round trip when HEMS is unavailable or the patient is not critical enough to support a flight.

2) Closing of community hospitals
Some rural communities are losing their community hospital - the 24 hour emergency department will be replaced with a 12-18 hour urgent clinic.
More patients will need to be carried to the regional hospital.
For a system with 2-3 ambulances covering a county, this significantly reduces 9-1-1 availability.

Mike
 
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