This document reports on a study which aimed to estimate the potential loss of life years for patients when medically indicated HEMS missions are cancelled and the patients are treated by a GP and ambulance staff only.

The aim in this study was both to investigate the incidents of threats and violence within the Swedish ambulance service and to describe these situations.

This study aimed to describe ACs’ experiences of assessing non-conveyed patients in Sweden.

The aim of our study was to investigate challenges faced by emergency physicians (EPs) who provide prehospital emergency care to patients with advanced incurable diseases and family caregivers in their familiar home environment.

The Institute of Rescue Service carried out this study as a first stocktaking with the aim of demonstrating possible common factors but also differences between the different pre-hospital systems. An essential factor for the structure and organisation of emergency medical services – apart from the political framework conditions – is represented by the geographical infrastructure as well as by the system of the health care of the population.

This publication is part of a series of publications developed by the trinational competence center TRISAN with the aim of mapping various aspects of health systems in Germany, France and Switzerland.

Emergency medical conditions typically occur through a sudden insult to the body or mind, often through injury, infection, obstetric complications, or chemical imbalance; they may occur as the result of persistent neglect of chronic conditions. Emergency medical services (EMS) to treat these conditions include rapid assessment, timely provision of appropriate interventions, and prompt transportation to the nearest appropriate health facility by the best possible means to enhance survival, control morbidity, and prevent disability. The goal of effective EMS is to provide emergency medical care to all who need it. Advances in medical care and technology in recent decades have expanded the parameters of what had been the traditional domain of emergency services. These services, no longer limited to actual in-hospital treatment from arrival to stabilization, now include prehospital care and transportation.

Efficient transport of non-emergency patients is crucial for ambulance service providers to cope with increased demand resulting from aging Western societies. This paper deals with the optimization of the patient transport operations of the Red Cross of Lower Austria, which is the main provider in this state. Different quality levels of the provided service - expressed by time windows, feasible maximum ride times and exclusive transports - are tested and analyzed on real-life instances to show daily impacts on the provider's resources. Comparisons of the developed solution approach to the recorded manual schedule prove its advantages. In contrast to previous work in this field, non-static service times that depend on the combination of patients, their transport mode, the vehicle type as well as the pickup or delivery locations are used. These service times are based on statistical analyses that have been performed on an anonymized dataset with more than 600,000 requests.

EMS strategies and challenges in Austria.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Greece have been created to offer first aid, primary medical treatment if required, stabilisation and safe and rapid transfer to the closest appropriate hospital. To achieve these objectives, organised systems have been established with trained personnel and physicians, suitable equipment, communication centres and protocols. We present the Greek EMS system and explain its history, structure, training, cooperation with Emergency Departments (ED) and an outlook on the future.