Objective: To calculate the monetary value of the time factor per
minute and per year for emergency services. Methods: The monetary
values for ambulance emergency services were calculated for two
different time factors, response time, which is the time from when a
call is received by the emergency medical service call-taking center
until the response team arrives at the emergency scene, and operational
time, which includes the time to the hospital. The study was
performed in two steps. First, marginal effects of reduced fatalities
and injuries for a 1-minute change in the time factors were calculated.
Second, the marginal effects and the monetary values were put
together to find a value per minute. Results: The values were found
to be 5.5 million Thai bath/min for fatality and 326,000 baht/min for
severe injury. The total monetary value for a 1-minute improvement
for each dispatch, summarized over 1 year, was 1.6 billion Thai baht
using response time. Conclusions: The calculated values could be
used in a cost-benefit analysis of an investment reducing the response
time. The results from similar studies could for example be compared
to the cost of moving an ambulance station or investing in a new
alarm system.
Keywords: cost-benefit, emergency medical service, medicine,
response time.
Copyright & 2014, Int