Quality of services provided by public funded ambulance program: Experience from a northern state in India

Background Ambulance Services are vital in providing pre-hospital treatment and care to help regain life. Timely and safe transport of patients from the emergency scene to the appropriate healthcare facility for further care is a complex process. Administering emergency services in minimal time is a challenge in a country with basic lacunae in infrastructure", making the role of EMTs (emergency medical technicians) and ambulance quality vital in saving lives. Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study using a structured questionnaire for the emergency medical technicians and ten parameters to inspect the quality of ambulances was used. Emergency medical technicians in 150 ambulances were interviewed and ambulance was inspected through convenience sampling. Chi-squared test was applied to investigate the association between quality of ambulance & emergency medical technicians' knowledge. Logistic regression was used to obtain the measure of association adjusted for confounders. SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 25, (Licensed software of IIHMR University, Jaipur) was used for analysis. Results Majority of the ambulances 68% (n = 102) were found to have met the standards. Almost 71% (n = 107) of the EMTs were observed to have below average knowledge. Among ambulances not meeting the standards, 66.7% (n = 101) had EMT with below average knowledge. Ambulance quality was found to be independent of the knowledge of EMTs after adjusting for the effects of years of experience and age of the EMTs. Conclusion Majority of the ambulances were found to have met the standards however public health workers should work towards improving the emergency medical technicians' knowledge on transportation of emergency cases.