Statewide Ambulance Coverage of a Mixed Region of Urban, Rural and Frontier under Travel Time Catchment Areas

EunSu Lee, Melanie McDonald, Erin O’Neill and William Montgomery
Additional contact information
EunSu Lee: Management Department, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ 07311, USA
Melanie McDonald: Management Department, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ 07311, USA
Erin O’Neill: Health Sciences Department, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ 07305, USA
William Montgomery: Earth and Environmental Sciences Department, New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ 07305, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 5, 1-21

Abstract: This study examines the statewide service coverage of emergency medical services (EMS) in view of public health planners, policy makers, and ambulance service managers. The study investigates the statewide service coverage in a mixed region of urban, rural, and frontier regions to address the importance of ambulance service coverage at a large scale. The study incorporated statewide road networks for ambulance travel time, census blocks for population, and backup service coverage using geographic information systems (GIS). The catchment areas were delineated by the travel time after subtracting chute time for each Census Block as an analysis zone. Using the catchment areas from the ambulance base to the centroid of Census Block, the population and land coverage were calculated. The service shortage and multiple coverage areas were identified by the catchment areas. The study found that both reducing chute time and increasing the speed of emergency vehicles at the same time was significantly more effective than improving only one of two factors. The study shows that the service is improved significantly in frontier and urban areas by increasing driving time and chute time. However, in rural areas, the improvement is marginal owing to wider distribution than urban areas and shorter threshold response time than frontier areas. The public health planners and EMS managers benefit from the study to identify underserved areas and redistribute limited public resources.

Keywords: service coverage; GIS; population covered ratio; land coverage; backup service; rural public health; response time; chute time; catchment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/5/2638/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/5/2638/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:5:p:2638-:d:511534

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().