When does your response time clock start?

[Richard B the EMT]

FDNY EMS uses from time the call taker gets the call. The call taker can have the call entered into the Computer Assisted Dispatch system, dispatch can hand the call to that nearest appropriate ambulance, which will be on the way, even as the call taker is giving the "Do this until the ambulance gets there" instructions.

The clock stops, officially, when the ambulance signals they are on the scene.

New policies are adding "vertical delays" into the equations, as in time waiting for the elevator, time riding up to the elevator, or nobody to open the door, or whatever delay between on scene and patient contact.

I am not adding the response of the Certified First Responder-Defibrillator Engine companies here, as I see that as a totally different string's worth of discussion.

[LtEMSChick]

my police dispatchers get the call, from that point they send PD over to the call, then they call ems, or fire, also depending on the call they will call in als. when i get the call over my pager in theory they give us the dispatch time. my pcr has a case number from pd, and the time the call was received. we are to fill in the rest of the times(responding, out on the call, to hospital,clear hospital and time als arrives) .my response time starts as soon as i get the page.

[ambulancedriver]

i think a systems should go with the clock starting when the call taker answers the phone ...it would put a little more pressure on the dispatcher to get a car enroute

[CBEMT]

Here's the part I can never understand:

A former dispatcher for the Denver paramedics remembers another call that came in late last year for a young boy with an arterial bleed from the neck that didn't give him a lot of time. "So I was trying to give instructions to control the bleeding, and obviously it wasn't being managed well by the folks that were there," she says. "There was no one to send. So time's just elapsing, and that red blinking light is in front of me. And I knew there was not only nobody to send, but nobody in the near future."

Is my area the only place on earth that does EMS mutual aid? Our capital city runs out of ambulances on a near-hourly basis. When they have a call holding, they don't sit around wringing their hands until somebody clears up. They call a bordering city on the Intercity radio channel and request one of their units, and a fire company responds to take vitals, provide O2, stop bleeding, start CPR, whatever. At busy times they could have all of their own ambulances running calls and an equal number of units from 4 or 5 neighboring departments in the capital running calls.

It's sad, pathetic, and the capital needs more ambulances, but there's NEVER a 15-minute delay just in DISPATCHING. Good lord.

[akroeze]

Here is another question....

Does the response time stop on the first arriving unit? What if it is a BLS unit on a VSA? What if it is a first response truck (eg Supervisor) does that count?

[toutdoors]

The ambulance service I work part time for gets a fax from comm center, and we enter the times on our run sheets. The times we record are time of call, time of dispatch, time en route, time on scene, time en route to hospital, time at hospital, and time we go back in service. The times that our supervisors look for are the time it takes to get the rig en route after we receive the dispatch ( 60 secs from 0600-2200, and under 2 min after 2200). They also look at our on scene time. Those are the two biggest ones, but they also look at how long it took to get on scene as well. If it is an extended time to get to scene, it must be noted, such as distance (which is rare if it is in the city), or if we were delayed by a train yada yada yada.

The city provides the comm center dispatchers for us, and there are times when they are overloaded, so some of our times can get skewed. For the most part, we maintain pretty good numbers, every now and again there will be a glitch, but the vast majority of time we are on scene under 8 minutes from time of dispatch.

[pond life]

In England our response times begin when the 999 (911) operator puts the call through to dispatch and the phone starts ringing. The call takes has 30 seconds to pick it up...!! It's called 'call connect' over here.

Mike

[sirduke]

Ours starts when we get the page.

[zippyRN]

as pond life says you forgot the option of 'when the telco connects the emergency call to your comms centre'

yet more zanuliarbour spin , but a much closer actual measure of response time from the point of view of the caller.

I don't think it's possible to reach many locations in our coverage area in less than 8 minutes. I may take as long as 35 minutes to drive from the station to the scene. That is on a clear, sunny day; when it's snowing it could take close to an hour.

which is why (none whacker) community based first responders are a valid model for either

1. response to high priroity emergencies in any area

2. any emergency safe to send a single responder to in 'really rural' areas

Edited March 19, 2009 by zippyRN

[tom5706]

Our dispatch is through the county, who also dispatches for fire and New York State Plice. We uses their time clock times.

The blocks fillec in on the PCR include the following: Called Received (toned out), Enroute , At scene, From Scene, At Location (usually hospital), In Service (returning to hall) In Quarters.

Keep in mind, if we are in a good responding distance, we can take another call while going back to hall.

Because we are rural, It is not uncommon to be called to "stand by" at another village fire hall, if they only have 1 ambulance, and we have 2. This also applies to fire vehicles as well. This mutual aid plan works quite well.