[Study of patients arriving by ambulance in Taipei City]

Owing to different cultural backgrounds, epidemiological disease patterns as well as economic status, it is important to collect local data regarding Emergency Medical Services (EMS), in order to direct our planning and to establish an appropriate EMS policy. This study was conducted from 1 July 1991 through 30 June 1992. During the 109 days of the study, 12502 prehospital records from Taipei city's 119 ambulances were collected and analyzed. The data entered into our computer included: date, age, district, time call received, arrival time on the scene, departure time form the scene, arival time at the hospital, items for basic life support care, cases requiring advanced life support (ALS), cases requiring cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), items used for ALS care, trauma mechanisms, cases of abuse, name of emergency medical technician (EMT) unit, receiving hospital, and resons for non-transportation. The results provided the following information: 1) in 7.41% of the ALS cases, ECG monitoring accounted for 3.13%, CPR for 3.55%, and IV injections for 0.73%; 2) cases needing the use of an ambulance accounted for 16.26% of the total; 3) the response time was 4.89 minutes on average; 4) time spent on the scene was 3.78 minutes; 5) the transportation time was 9.76 minutes; and 6) the percentage of abuse was 29.09%. Based on these results we recommend the following: 1) in enacting the EMS law, the policy stipulating that one ambulance should be expected to serve a population of 50 thousand should be modified because of limited daily emergency calls; and 2) education of the lay public is needed to prevent ambulance abuse. These are the main issues that need to be focused on in the development of our EMS system.