From: Lucas G. van Rossem, RN
Date: 19.10.1999 10:28 GMT

Dear members,
I am interested in the response times within your system. I would be very pleased if you could give me this information. I want to know what the response times are for the EMS units and the fire dept. units or the police dept.if they respond to medical emergencies.

Also, if available I would like to know if these response times have a legal basis (like the government demanding certain response times) or if these response times are the result of interagency agreements. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Lucas G. van Rossem, RN
Leiden Fire Department/EMS division,
Leiden, the Netherlands

From: D. Johnson
Date: 20.10.1999 01:33 GMT

Response times varies. Here in Los Angeles, the response time on average about 5 to 6 minutes. But this is also dependent on how busy the EMS system is, traffic and the location of the call in relation to the posting point or station the EMS units are at.

D. Johnson LAC
EMT

From: Ian Civil
Date: 20.10.1999 08:17 GMT

Dear Lucas, The St John Ambulance service in Auckland is required to attend 80% of priority one (emergency) calls within 10 minutes. No-one knows where this figure comes from (not evidence based as far as I can tell) and obviously one could make the case that it isn't nearly quick enough. On the other hand our geography is quite spread out and travel times significant (even though Auckland is just over 1 million people it is 65km from north to south.

From: Richard Wigle
Date: 20.10.1999 08:50 GMT

When I was reviewing trauma deaths in Atlanta in the mid 80's (obviously the worse case scenario)the longest response time from call to scene was 20 minutes with most being right around 10. Longer times were usually occasioned by geography or communication breakdown with a rare few being traffic related. We felt this to be satisfactory and I suspect it is probably fairly standard.

If your response times are all less I would guess you may have allocated an undue amount of your resources to pre hospital (if not, more power to you). Much longer and you need to look at your system.

R Wigle LTC USAMC
Eagle Base Bosnia

From: Alejandro Cabrera
Date: 20.10.1999 15:27 GMT

Maybe you could find more information with good bibliography in the book "Prehospital systems and medical oversights" from Alexander Kuehl , M.D. edited by mosby , which is a textbook for a EMS medical directors course .

Alejandro Cabrera , M.D.
Servicio Privado de Emergencia Guadalajara , Mexico.
ALS ambulances.

From: Mathias Kalkum
Date: 21.10.1999 19:10 GMT

Lucas,
We shifted from a rather odd station system (some rescue van had to come to pick up the emergency physician) to a rendezvous-system, so our data needs to be freshened up. We cover a rural area with a range of up to 24 road km´s. Preliminary data shows an average time from alert to arrival on scene of 9.X (old system) to 7.X minutes (new system, range 1 - 25 minutes).

Legal basis for response times differs from state to state, mostly they demand a certain amount of emergencies (e.g. “85%”) to be covered within 10 / 12 / (15) minutes.

These rules may or may not be the result of interagency agreements, they often mirror the area, population, and tradition of emergency medical service.

Hope this helps. Mathias