Background: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a frequent and acute medical condition that requires\r\nimmediate care. We estimate survival rates from OHCA in the area of Stockholm, through developing an analytical\r\ntool for evaluating Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system design changes. The study also is an attempt to\r\nvalidate the proposed model used to generate the outcome measures for the study.\r\nMethods and results: This was done by combining a geographic information systems (GIS) simulation of driving\r\ntimes with register data on survival rates. The emergency resources comprised ambulance alone and ambulance\r\nplus fire services. The simulation model predicted a baseline survival rate of 3.9 per cent, and reducing the\r\nambulance response time by one minute increased survival to 4.6 per cent. Adding the fire services as first\r\nresponders (dual dispatch) increased survival to 6.2 per cent from the baseline level. The model predictions were\r\nvalidated using empirical data.\r\nConclusion: We have presented an analytical tool that easily can be generalized to other regions or countries. The\r\nmodel can be used to predict outcomes of cardiac arrest prior to investment in EMS design changes that affect the\r\nalarm process, e.g. (1) static changes such as trimming the emergency call handling time or (2) dynamic changes\r\nsuch as location of emergency resources or which resources should carry a defibrillator.
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