Resource planning for ambulance services in mass c

Authors: Marion S Rauner Michaela M SchaffhauserLinzatti Helmut Niessner

Publish Date: 2012/06/01

Volume: 15, Issue: 3, Pages: 254-269

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Abstract

Due to an increasing number of mass casualty incidents which are generally complex and unique in nature we suggest that decision makers consider operations researchbased policy models to help prepare emergency staff for improved planning and scheduling at the emergency site We thus develop a discreteevent simulation policy model which is currently being applied by disasterresponsive ambulance services in Austria By evaluating realistic scenarios our policy model is shown to enhance the scheduling and outcomes at operative and online levels The proposed scenarios range from small simple and urban to rather large complex remote mass casualty emergencies Furthermore the organization of an advanced medical post can be improved on a strategic level to increase rescue quality including enhanced survival of injured victims In particular we consider a realistic mass casualty incident at a brewery relative to other exemplary disasters Based on a variety of such situations we derive general policy implications at both the macro eg strategic rescue policy and micro eg operative and online scheduling strategies at the emergency site levelsWe thank a large number of bachelors masters and PhD students mainly at the University of Vienna as well as practitioners staff of the Red Cross and the Samaritan Organization and members of other organizations all of whom played our disaster policy game and contributed significantly to the ongoing improvement of the underlying model Special thanks go to Natasa Peric and Teresa Herdlicka masters students at the University of Vienna who set up a large experiment designed to investigate the simulation game They recruited and tutored 96 players under the cosupervision of Prof Dr Ulrike LeopoldWildburger from the University of Graz an Austrian expert on experimental games The authors also wish to express their gratitude to the editors of HCMS and three anonymous referees for their most valuable comments and pertinent suggestions that led to improvements in both the presentation and content of this paper Special thanks are due to Barnett R Parker who helped us with a professional edit of the manuscript

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