What Is A Response Time?
Response time should be defined as the time from when the dispatcher at 911 has a verifiable address until enough resources are on the scene to successfully mitigate the emergency.
I could not help but notice all the waves of opinions flying across the internet, in my e-mail box, and in local newspapers across the United States when USA TODAY published their three-part series on EMS in the United States in late July. There were more opinions than fire department t-shirts at a fire conference.
The series of articles looked at how emergency medical care is delivered, how fast helps arrives, and how many patients a year are dying because of poor systems. It examined data from the top 50 most populous cities and was complimentary of some and downright scathing of others.
On the second day of the series, the newspaper headline screamed "The price of just a few seconds lost: People die."
What the article brought out and briefly discussed before going on to other issues was response times. To me, discussing how we measure response times could have been a three-part series by itself.
USA TODAY's analysis showed that very few of the 50 most populous cities know exactly how long EMS and fire crews take to reach the side of a cardiac arrest patient.
USA TODAY also said in their article that most of the 50 most populous cities "don't know their response times, refused to disclosed them or use imprecise measures that are meaningless
