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Emergency Medical Services Demand: An Analysis of County-Level Social Determinants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2022

Jackson D Déziel Open the ORCID record for Jackson D Déziel [Opens in a new window]
Jackson D Déziel*
Affiliation:
School of Health Sciences, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, USA
*
Corresponding author: Jackson Déziel, Email: jddeziel@wcu.edu.
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Abstract

Objectives:

Variations in the demand for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) exist when observed at a local level. This unspecified heterogeneity leads to an investigation of social factors contributing to EMS demand.

Methods:

Data for this study were collected from publicly available EMS reports from Florida and Oklahoma for 2009 - 2015. Health and social data were gathered from County health rankings and roadmap reports. Data were combined into a single dataset, and pooled ordinary-least-squares models with time-fixed effects were utilized for tests of inference. EMS call volume was log-transformed to derive a semi-elasticity function.

Results:

A total of 874 county-year observations were analyzed. Increases in poor/fair health (95% CI: 0.6% - 3.9%), binge drinking (95% CI: 1.6% - 3.5%), teen birth rate (95% CI: 1.1% - 5.2%), unemployment rate (95% CI: 0.5% - 3.9%), and violent crime rate (95% CI: 1.0% - 3.0%) were associated with an increase in the EMS demand rate.

Conclusion:

The data supports the notion that some community measures have an effect on EMS demand as counties with higher levels of poor health, binge drinking, teen births, unemployment, and violent crime saw higher EMS demand. These factors may have been treated as spurious, or overlooked by policy makers and EMS leadership.

Keywords

emergency medical servicesEMS demandambulance utilizationsocial determinants of health
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 17 , 2023 , e119
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc.

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