We’ve been monitoring the response times for the big ambulance service provider – Rural Metro – since they went into bankruptcy in August. They have 13 different ambulance services in Arizona and we want to make sure that they’re meeting the grade during their reorganization. We asked them to send us monthly reports on their response times in each ambulance district. We’ve seen some progress in the first two months… and the October data we got this week continues to look OK.
But remember… response times are only one component of the performance puzzle. In order to look at system quality we encourage ambulance companies and fire departments to join the Premier EMS Agency Program and SHARE/EPIC and to collect data on some targeted performance measures relating to heart attack, stroke, trauma and cardiac arrest. You can check here to see if your local ambulance service provider has joined up.
