The Role of the Built Environment in Emergency Medical Services Delays in Responding to Traffic Crashes

Abstract

This study aims to explore the role of built environments affecting emergency medical services (EMS) responses to traffic crashes. Specifically, this study integrated socioeconomic databases with a crash database that contains the EMS response information. Given the multilevel data structure, a hierarchical model was developed to connect EMS response times to the built environment and other associated factors at various hierarchies. The model results revealed that the built environment plays a vital role in EMS performance in terms of response times. For example, EMS response times differ significantly between rural and urban areas. If other factors are held constant, the EMS response time for a rural crash is 25.13% more likely to be longer than 10 min than for an urban crash. Other factors such as land use, area, development, roadway class, road lighting, weather, and EMS facility distance are also significantly related to EMS response times. This study offers insights into improving EMS responses to traffic crashes by considering the role of built environments. More implications are discussed in the paper.