Troske, Kenneth*

College of B&E, Economics Department

When Emergency Departments Close in a Community Does It Affect Distance and Time in an Ambulance?

When a hospital closes in most cases the emergency department (ED) also closes. These closures change where ambulance services transport patients, the distance to another ED and the time it takes to get there. Hospital closures and ED closures change access to ED services by ambulance for patients. These changes may mean additional time and distance in an ambulance changing health outcomes for patients.

Financing and Managing Ambulance Services: How it Affects Efficiency of Service Delivery

For this study, we want to understand how community ambulance services are organized. We want to know who manages and owns the services for their residents and if one funding policy seems better suited for consistent demands of ambulance services. The services are organized as non-profit, for-profit, and hospital managed. We are measuring differences in demand by looking at response times to 911 calls for ambulance services by ownership type.

Data and Software for Both Projects

We acquired 2010-2015 NEMSIS data. These data are all ambulance calls in the US. The data have up to 30 million incident calls per year. Each call has numerous data collected to describe the vehicle, patient and incident characteristics.

Software:

We will use R and MATLAB for data manipulation and regression analysis.

Student

Sookti Chaudhary – Graduate Student (Gatton College of Business and Economics, Economics)

UK Collaborators

SuZanne Troske, Scientist II (College of Agriculture, CEDIK)
Alison Davis (College of Agriculture, CEDIK)
Kenneth Troske (Gatton College of Business and Economics, Economics)

Publications

Troske, S. P., & Davis, A. F. (2017). Ambulance Services for Medicare Beneficiairies: State Differences in Usage, 2012-2014. Lexington, KY: Rural & Underserved Health Research Center

Grant

Research Grant from John H. Schnatter Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise and BB&T Program for the Study of Capitalism