An evaluation methodology for multielement emergency medical services systems

The provision of efficient public safety services continues to be one of the high priority efforts to improve the quality of life in our nation. These efforts are too often equipment oriented without realizing the system input of providing better services in terms of benefit to the public as opposed to providers of the services. These services are multielement containing many items which can be quantified and qualitative aspects which are difficult to assess. The methodology presented herein is designed to specifically evaluate such multi-element systems in a logical manner. Its use expanded to other than emergency medical service systems will permit weak areas to be identified, develop comparisions and rank system elements as to their individual contributions to "bottom line" results, and to help establish priorities for allocation of funding resources.