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responder-focused!
Another problem is these crazy standards we make up. Sometimes we pick 8 minutes, or 7:59.99, or 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 4 minutes, or whatever. These are all completely baseless from a clinical standpoint. If they did matter, where are all the dead & permanently disabled people who didn't get an EMS response for 20, 30, 45 or 60 minutes? The EMS Skeptic has been to a lot of rural areas and hasn't found them. The Skeptic also thinks we measure response times how we do because it is easy, not because it is worthwhile.
While we're at it, lets not forget to mention that response time probably does matter when someone needs an AED, an open airway, or an epinephrine auto injector.
Why is it we tell people we need gobs of money to get our stuff to those emergencies quickly when we should probably be figuring out how to get more people who aren't us with the right stuff to those emergencies before us? The EMS Skeptic also thinks beating up on emergency responders to make an arbitrary response time target is really dumb because it encourages people to endanger themselves and the public to get somewhere quicker than they should. Anybody remember how that worked out for Domino‚s Pizza back in the days of the 30-minute guarantee?
Finally, what is up with local governments, most of which aren't willing to pay much for EMS, putting some response time standard in place to make sure EMS systems aren't grossly under-resourced. Isn't that the cheap policing the stingy? What ever happened to protecting the public, responsibility and professional ethics?
Speaking of ethics, the Skeptic thinks it is totally inappropriate to tell the public "people will die" anytime we don't get our way or our stuff -- when we know that is pretty much complete hogwash meant to scare people! The EMS skeptic thinks we should give up on response time measurement and spend more time trying to get needed care to the patient in a prompt, safe and effective manner without using such a bad tool.
-The Skeptic
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EMS Skeptic 