National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) notes.

摘要

Emergency medical services (EMS) systems are configured differently, depending on several factors, including the size, demographics, geography, and politics of the local communities they serve. Although some information exists about the organization, financing, and delivery of EMS in 200 of the nation's largest cities,1 this information is incomplete and does not provide any information on how services are organized for the proportion of the nation's population (75%) that resides outside of these urban areas. What we do know, however, is that there is wide variability in how systems are structured and organized, with little evidence to support alternative configurations in terms of their influence on the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery. To understand which EMS systems work well, an important first step is the development of a typology of system configurations so they may be evaluated on a common basis. This pilot research is a first step toward developing such a typology by characterizing local EMS systems in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.