INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT Healthcare
Moving
At The Speed
Of Medical
Emergencies
MedStar Mobile Healthcare
says post-to-post approach is
good medicine
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www.ntc-dfw.org
t is an approach perfected in Vietnam by U.S. combat troops
and medical teams: by strategically placing medical facilities
and transportation close to the front, survival rates of injured
soldiers improved. That same battle-tested idea is in service
every day in Dallas/Fort Worth -- an urban jungle far from the
swamps of southeast Asia but with the same high value on
human life that necessitates the fastest response possible
when emergencies occur. MedStar Mobile Healthcare, a
leading North Texas emergency medical services provider, is
employing this effective approach of the past and combining
it with a new level of technology to give residents of the
DFW area a fighting chance when they find themselves in a
medical emergency.
In a communications center in Fort Worth, a darkened
room is staffed by experts in this “post-to-post” philosophy,
a model now adopted by many of the 15 public utility EMS
providers across the country, including MedStar Mobile
Healthcare. Post-to-post uses careful modeling -- becoming
more advanced every day with more sophisticated software
applications -- that allows experts to identify “hotspot”
locations. By looking at call volumes, MedStar Mobile
Healthcare’s experts can predict -- by hour, day or week -where calls will occur in the given service area and mobilize
emergency medical services and transportation to meet that
predicted need.
This approach leads MedStar Mobile Healthcare to station
paramedics and ambulances in places like local convenience
stores and gas stations, which tend to build facilities in
critical, high-volume locations next to highways. Rather than
just sipping sodas and stocking up on snacks, MedStar Mobile
Healthcare paramedics stand at the ready to roll out when the
call comes, putting them miles closer to the people who need
them. Each day, MedStar Mobile Healthcare’s communication
center personnel order an average of 750 post-to-post moves
per day to maximize response time performance among the
agency’s ambulances, which number between 20 and 42,
depending on the time of day or day of week.
Winter/Spring 2015
MedStar’s new ambulance.
And, to accomplish this, they have to know what those
volumes are going to be on any given day. Decades of
response volume in MedStar Mobile Healthcare’s systems
are continuously analyzed, which generates a “heat map”
showing areas that have the highest predicted number
of calls. Available ambulances are superimposed on the
map to show where the ambulance can respond in seven
minutes, taking into account current traffic patterns and
flow. Though EMS call volume is relatively predictable,
based on population density, time of day and day of week,
the magic in the mix is knowing how to deploy resources
to quickly and efficiently get to that emergency -- a
strategy that MedStar Mobile Healthcare has pioneered in
responding to an average of 120,000 calls per year with a
90 percent response time reliability to be at the scene of
life-threatening [Y\