Fire EMS vs Private/hospital based

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WyMedic

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Hey All,
So I'm writing a paper for a college class with the intention of comparing and contrasting Fire based EMS systems vs Standalone systems and need to get some peer reviewed papers to include as part of my paper. I've done a little digging and haven't been able to come up with a ton of stuff that is specific to the question. Does anyone have anything they have seen or know about that might be useful?
 
What specifically do you want to compare and contrast?
 
You know, I had left that open until I was able to get some info to work with. I was considering things like, response times, cost effectiveness, patient outcomes etc. I'm definitely open to ideas.

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That's going to vary hugely from department to department. In terms of basic nuts and bolts operation, I don't think you'll see a whole lot of substantive difference. But, as has been said time and again, "if you've seen one EMS agency, you've seen one EMS agency".

And frankly, since training, protocols and systems vary so much, I don't know if you could even quantify a comparison.
 
Hmm, maybe this was a poor research topic, I'll do some digging and see what I can find. If anyone has suggestions for research topics related to EMS that would be more easily quantifiable I'd be open to suggestions!

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WyMedic, how about studying outcome-based performance measurement?
 
That's a great idea, where would i start though? And is there something more specific that I could phrase a research question around?

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WyMedic, I guess I'd start by summarizing popular ways of measuring EMS performance (e.g., response times, therapeutics), discuss pros and cons of each, then present alternatives. You can reach me at mgr22@prodigy.net if you want to discuss it further.
 
Thanks so much! I may just take you up on that and shoot you an email

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Long term cost to the community is a huge difference
 
While I agree that this is an important issue, there is a relative paucity of high quality research on EMS systems design.

You would be better off choosing something clinical, I'd say, if you have the option.
 
RocketMedic said:
Long term cost to the community is a huge difference
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Sure, and long term benefit to the provider (in terms of retirement, pension, salary) is a huge difference.

Two sides to every coin, all depends on which side you are looking at.
 
DrParasite said:
Two sides to every coin, all depends on which side you are looking at.
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Absolutely true - lots of stakeholders for an EMS system (which often makes it awfully hard to have a good one...)
 
EpiEMS said:
While I agree that this is an important issue, there is a relative paucity of high quality research on EMS systems design.

You would be better off choosing something clinical, I'd say if you have the option.
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I may end up doing that, I thought this would be an interesting topic since I have worked in both models and wanted to compare them, but it just doesn't seem like there is a lot of quantitative data to build a 10-page paper on. I think that something clinical might be easier but with the length of the paper, I wanted something semi-broad so that I could easily reach the length that I needed.
 
@WyMedic Gotcha - just thought I'd put the thought out there. I think I could do a 10 page paper on, say, selective spinal immobilization and the move away from backboards.

What about a paper on how good/bad we are at triaging patients in EMS? There's some research out there on this.
 
EpiEMS said:
@WyMedic Gotcha - just thought I'd put the thought out there. I think I could do a 10 page paper on, say, selective spinal immobilization and the move away from backboards.

What about a paper on how good/bad we are at triaging patients in EMS? There's some research out there on this.
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That's a really good idea. I've read some interesting things about pre hospital triage

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Carrie Lendon said:
Billing. That's the difference between a fire department and a private service.
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my last department was a transporting fire department that billed for EMS runs, at rates comparable to my current private company (at least as far as I'm aware as neither ever told field crews how much pt's were billed, though we have a general idea)
 
Carrie Lendon said:
Billing. That's the difference between a fire department and a private service.
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Hardly the only difference, but ok. And yes, transport departments bill.
 
VentMonkey said:
Hardly the only difference, but ok. And yes, transport departments bill.
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I didn't say it was the only difference.
I know here at the department we soft bill. Most private EMS will hard bill. You could very easily write an entire paper on the differences between private vs department.
 
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