Adult and Pediatric Emergency Medical Services Ambulance Response Times

The routine use of lights and sirens (L&S) by emergency medical services (EMS) may be associated with increased risk of ambulance crashes. Recently, the National Association of EMS Physicians and American College of Emergency Physicians, among others, released a joint statement recommending decreased use of L&S when appropriate.

Given the recent shifting culture in recommended L&S use, our objective was to describe current EMS response times across the U.S., stratified by urbanicity and patient age.

This was a cross-sectional evaluation of the 2023 National EMS Information System (NEMSIS) Public-Release Research dataset. We included 9-1-1 ground EMS activations. We defined pediatric patients as < 18 years of age and defined urbanicity according to the 2013 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Urban Influence Codes. We calculated the EMS response time in minutes as the time from EMS dispatch to arrival at the patient's side. Results were summarized using descriptive statistics, with mean, median, and 90th percentile calculated.

There were 32,247,001 (n = 1,767,241, 5.5% pediatric) EMS activations included. The median overall response time was 7.1 minutes. Median response times were faster in urban locations (7.0 minutes, IQR: 5.0-10.2) and slowest in wilderness locations (9.0 minutes, IQR: 5.2-15.8). Pediatric patients experienced slightly faster response times than adults, but with less than a minute difference.

Response times vary by urbanicity, and about one in 10 patients experienced a response time longer than 15 minutes.