NINETY per cent of ambulance delays in New Providence in 2012-2013 were due to “a lack of availability of a unit”, a report prepared by the government’s international consultants Sanigest Internacional found.
The report says that an estimated 40 per cent of ambulance runs in New Providence reported some delay in the specified time period.
The report was commissioned by the government to assess the feasibility of National Health Insurance and examine costs and financing for the proposed plan.
The document also gives insight into the public healthcare system and some of the problems the critical area faces.
According to the report, during the specified time period, more than half of the 1,321 ambulance runs to southwestern New Providence took more than 20 minutes.
However, ambulance runs to the central and south central areas of the island had “15 per cent or less” of its calls taking more than 20 minutes.
The Sanigest report also found that emergency response times for ambulances in New Providence was on average 34 minutes in 2012-2013, way above the recommended eight minutes arrival time for advanced life support (ALS) calls.
In Grand Bahama and Abaco, average response times were 17:51 minutes and 11:47 minutes, respectively for the same time period.
“It is important to note that the first response by a basic life support (BLS) provider (to commence CPR) should be less than four minutes, and arrival within eight minutes of advanced life support (ALS),” the report says.
The consultants offered suggestions to increase emergency services efficiency, based on international best practices. These include: developing the role of the paramedic to increase the scope of the practice and integrating primary care providers, which can potentially decrease the response time in rural communities and Family Islands of BLS and integrating clinical assessment and referral into the parametric training in order to strengthen referral system to local medical facilities.
The report also suggests integrating a dispatch triage system in order to prioritize cases and using GPS systems, which has proven to positively influence response time.
According to the report, the Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) spent $2,958,659 for the fiscal year ending on June 2013 on emergency services, 82 per cent of which were personnel emolument costs.
“During this same time period, there were approximately 20,827 ambulance runs reported in Abaco, Grand Bahama and New Providence. On average, each ambulance run cost PHA on average $142 and $2.27 per minutes of ambulance time,” the report says.
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