Philippine E-Journals

Location Model in an Emergency Medical Services System of Davao City, Philippines

Apolinar T. Paulican | Jose Mari E. Ortega

Discipline: Mathematics

 

Abstract:

Emergency medical services (EMS) is a vital part of health care which often means a difference between the life or death of a patient. Unfortunately, in the Philippines, EMS are often inadequate to respond within the ten-minute standard response time, followed in other nations. This is of special concern especially with the increasing demands for EMS of the growing population. This study aimed to develop a model for EMS using a local city, Davao City, Philippines as the study site. It presented a mathematical model for an ambulance station network that considered the response time standard while maximizing the demand coverage. Results show that the present single EMS set up for Davao City (code: Central 911), covers only 39.45% of the entire demand of the city. However, using the Maximum Coverage Location Problem (MCLP) model without counting the existing one, the model yielded a network of 12 ambulance stations with the designated places to fully cover the medical demands of Davao City, Philippines. It is concluded that this formula can be used as a basis for the establishment of Emergency Medical Services in other cities in the Philippines as well as in other nations.