Busiest service in the States

[stcommodore]

Philadelphia Fire Dept has the busiest Medic unit(s) in the US I'm sure. Medic 2 and Medic 22 are 8,500-9,000 calls a year and there UHU for 08 was over 100%. Granted recalls and other incidents that don't result in a patient transport are all counted but there is no hard and fast rule on that. My medic unit did 6,500 ish in 08 and we were 7th busiest of 50.

[HERBIE1]

Difficult question to answer. So many variables, different types of services, different schedules(24/8/10/16 hr shifts), multi-tiered responses, etc. If we could find out what you want to do with the info, maybe we can narrow it down.

[stcommodore]

Narrow it down to UHU. Unit Hour Utilization for your specific unit or system will give you a strait answer regardless of hours in service, units, etc.

[donedeal]

Difficult question to answer. So many variables, different types of services, different schedules(24/8/10/16 hr shifts), multi-tiered responses, etc. If we could find out what you want to do with the info, maybe we can narrow it down.

I am looking into a Philly Fire Service Medic position and have been told by many to STAY away because they run so many calls with so few ambulances. I wanted to find out the actual UHU, which I did in a City Controllers report, stating the average was up to .80, some over 100 (as previously posted). I want to see how other departments compare, to see if Philly FD actually does have a much higher calls to units ratio.

And why is the standard .42?

[kevkei]

Narrow it down to UHU. Unit Hour Utilization for your specific unit or system will give you a strait answer regardless of hours in service, units, etc.

Not really, you'd have to assume everyone is calculating the UHU with the same format and including/excluding the same variables. It's like stats for response times, cardiac arrest survival, etc.

[stcommodore]

Not really, you'd have to assume everyone is calculating the UHU with the same format and including/excluding the same variables. It's like stats for response times, cardiac arrest survival, etc.

Unit Hour Utilization-a measurement of productivity of a system calculated by diving the number of TRANSPORTS by number of UNIT HOURS produced.

So to get a acurate UHU by that definition you would have to remove: Recalls, Refusals, Standbys, Care Transferred, etc

[kevkei]

Unit Hour Utilization-a measurement of productivity of a system calculated by diving the number of TRANSPORTS by number of UNIT HOURS produced.

So to get a acurate UHU by that definition you would have to remove: Recalls, Refusals, Standbys, Care Transferred, etc

And I understand that, but you assume everyone is calculating their UHU with the same formula and I can tell you that not all of them do. Plus, if you add other job related factors, the UHU isn't fully accurate anyway. A more important benchmark is time on task. For example, if it is common for a system to deal with diabetics and you treat and release, but you are assigned to the incident for 1.5 hours, this isn't included in your UHU.

To illustrate, if a crew works a 10 hour shift, they transport 4 patients with a total incident time of 4 hours (1 hour per event) this would equal roughly a UHU or .40. But lets say for another 2 events, they treat and release 2 diabetics for another total of 3 hours (1.5 per). Add to this time to refuel, restock, respond to a couple of other events but cancel en route for another 1 hour (cumulative time of 8 hours). Then they do a 1.5 hour fire standby, help perform rehab, do pre/post entry vitals on fire crews, etc. Now we have 9.5 hours of the entire shift. Somewhere in there, they get a 15 minute lunch break 3/4 of the way through the shift. Last but not least, they get a late call on the way back to their station and work 1 hour of overtime.

Statistically, they had an UHU of 0.4 for the shift but ran ass ragged all day. So who really is the busiest system in the States? It's all a guess my friend because stats can be collated to reflect whatever the beholder wants.

[spenac]

Statistically, they had an UHU of 0.4 for the shift but ran ass ragged all day. So who really is the busiest system in the States? It's all a guess my friend because stats can be collated to reflect whatever the beholder wants.

Excellent point. Its just like the "save" stats. There are so many variables that are involved that none are accurate. This leads to some services claiming some large percentages but when you break it down they are no better if not worse than other services.

[Richard B the EMT]

Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens said

There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

[djmedic]

Doc, be honest! The movie sucked. Books were great...movie didn't do it justice.

There was an older BBC version of the Hitchhiker's book made which was actually pretty good to the book, unlike the crappy hollywood version. The BBC version touches the beginning of "The Restuarant at the End of The Universe"

and the ultimate answer is 42...but you have the ultimate question wrong....