Evaluation of prehospital emergency performance services in Shahrekord city in 2016

Prehospital care plays an important role in emergency patients’ management. More correct, proper, and faster management of the patients will reduce the mortality and morbidity. In this cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical research, all five EMS stations of Shahrekord city were studied in 2016. Data were collected from staff and equipment in Shahrekord EMS stations by using checklists. In addition, about 742 recorded mission reports of central station studies. The status of manpower, equipment status and response time compared with the standards & regulations of Ministry of Health, the standards provided by Institute of Standards & Industrial Research of Iran, reference standards of Iran and North America respectively using excel software and descriptive statistics (percent, cumulative distribution, and standard deviation). The results of the study in Shahrekord EMS system are as follows: none of the stations has enough human resources; none of the emergency ambulances was equipped with the necessary equipment; the greatest shortage is related to critical-therapeutic management equipment that only 57.4% of the ambulances used this equipment. The best condition was that about 95.9% of ambulances have respiratory ventilation equipment. Another point was that 81.5% of the requests were answered in less than 6 minutes. The results indicated that response time is a very important factor in reducing the incidence of illnesses and emergencies, but shortcomings in manpower and ambulance equipment can reduce the effectiveness of missions. Therefore, eliminating the shortage of manpower and equipment seems necessary.