Which of the following two factors are typically taken into account when making ambulance deployment decisions?

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Volume 133, January 2020, 103975

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Ambulance station location

Emergency response planning

Deployment is defined as the approach of ambulances and crews in an effort to minimize response time, and it is based on location of facilities to house ambulances, location of hospital, anticipated volume of calls, and local geographic and traffic considerations. Deployment decisions take in account past community responses and demographic changes to be constantly up to date.

Peak load, or the highest volume of calls at a given time, should be described per days of the week and time of the day. Some areas do not have multiple stations strategically located, and therefore they establish primary areas of responsibility (PAR) in order to provide effective care. PAR can be described as stationing of ambulances at specific high-volume locations, and their location and size changes based on peak load, and peak load location.

Traffic congestion such as grade-level railroad, commuter traffic, school bus schedules, sport events, VIP appearances, and public gathering are all special considerations that deployment takes into account. A tiered response system (“system that allows multiple vehicles to arrive at an EMS call at different times, often providing different levels of care or transport”) is commonly used to meet reliability. To set deployment standards (or to influence them in order to achieve optimal response), national guidelines are taken into consideration, for example a cardiac arrest patient who need defibrillation within 4 minutes, followed by advanced care within 8 minutes. Such cases must be evaluated and the standards should be based considering them.

As far as operational staffing, the amount of paramedics that should be assigned to a unit varies widely according to community needs and resources. Because of it, unit staffing is very likely to remain settled locally. In general, ambulance staff should take into consideration the peak load, and need for reserve capacity (defined as “the ability of an EMS agency to respond to calls beyond those handled by the on-duty crews). In order to fulfill reserve capacity needs, the system may ask volunteers for backup, or even ask off-duty personnel to carry pagers. Standards for ambulance operators and driving of the rescue/ vehicle are usually set at the local service level.
In the next section I will address Safe Ambulance Operations.

All this info is based in my opinion and interpretation of Essentials of Paramedic Care 7th Ed. Follow your protocols. I hope it helped.

Aryse G. P. Pinheiro