Ambulance utilization in Tainan: Analysis of emergency ambulance missions in urban and rural areas

To investigate ambulance utilization in rural and urban districts, a retrospective analysis of total 15,808 emergency ambulance calls within the Tainan City and Tainan County from October 1993 to September 1994 was performed. In both areas, traffic accident was the leading cause of ambulance calls (54.9 % in city and 57.9 % in county, respectively). The response time in emergency missions indicated that 82.8 % of the calls in the city and 84.8 % in the county were within eight minutes; 92.0 % calls in the city and 91.4 % calls in the county were within ten minutes, respectively. In scene stay time was longer in the urban region than in the rural region (3.93.7 vs. 3.13.6 minutes, p < 0.05). Total transport time was shorter in urban region than in rural region (15.57.3 vs. 26.116.2 minutes, p < 0.05). Ambulance utilization was higher in the urban region than in the rural region (0.34 vs. 0.19 transport per 10,000 population per day). Non-transport rate was higher in the urban region than in the rural region (37.8 % vs. 23.3 %). In the city, 94.7 % of the transports were sent to the receiving hospital, however, only 72.4 % transports in the county were sent to the receiving hospital. The study indicates that there were differences between urban and rural areas due to resource and geographic factors. Such difference must be considered while planning for regional emergency medical service (EMS). In addition, developing largescaled and standard EMS data collection system is mandatory for improving the quality EMS in Taiwan.