Improving rural emergency medical services (EMS) through transportation system enhancements.

PDFTech ReportMPC 14-267Rural areasEmergency medical servicesNeeds assessmentEmergency response timeTrip lengthTraffic safetySouth DakotaMountain Plains ConsortiumSamra, HaifaQin, XiaoHe, ZhaoxiangSouth Dakota State UniversityUnited States. Dept. of Transportation. Research and Innovative Technology AdministrationUS Transportation CollectionImproved emergency medical services (EMS) will impact traffic safety and public health in ruralcommunities. Better planned, designed, and operated roadway networks that connect hospitals withcommunities in need will enhance EMS performance. To provide safe, timely and quality services, it isnecessary to obtain a realistic estimate of the medical demand and the capacity of current transportationinfrastructure pertaining to the services. The gaps between service providers, patients, and transportationnetwork connecting the two need to be identified and filled to support better EMS. The goal of thisproject was to identify issues with respect to the delivery of quality EMS to rural residents in SouthDakota (SD) and to conduct a needs assessment from the rural transportation system perspective. Studyobjectives were:1. Identify the service needs from the rural communities2. Evaluate the rural transportation system components in support of swift and safe EMS3. Identify the existing issues with the SD EMS providers or first responders related to roadsand traffic controlsStudy objectives were achieved through a combination of literature review, spatial and temporal analysisof SD EMS data, and EMS personnel surveys and focus groups. In addition to survey results, this reportsummarizes the SD EMS data from the geographic (e.g., counties in SD) and temporal (e.g., time of day,day of week, and month of year) perspectives and concentrates on several time- and distance-dependentvariables such as response time, en-route time, on-scene time, and transporting time as well as thedistance to and from the incident scene