Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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The growing number of aged in the United States will continue to increase the demand for medical services, including emergency care. In a medium-sized city, 22% of 14,400 emergency medical service responses were to patients over 65 years of age. ⋯ Men were more likely to suffer a cardiac condition; women, an injury. Elderly patients were 1.7 times more likely to require paramedic-accompanied transportation to hospital.
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Models estimating demand and need for emergency transportation services are developed. These models can provide reliable estimates which can be used for planning purposes, by complementing and/or substituting for historical data. The model estimating demand requires only four independent variables: population in the area, employment in the area, and two indicators of socioeconomic status which can be obtained from census data. ⋯ It enables planners to estimate unmet need occurring in the region. The effect of emergency transportation service (ETS) provider characteristics on demand was also investigated. Statistical tests show that, for purposes of forecasting demand, when the sociodemographic factors are taken into account, provider characteristics are not significant.