Improving Productivity: An Emergency Service System in Which Cross-Trained Fire-Medics Respond to Medical Calls and Fire Incidents

34 Pages Posted: 27 Aug 2019 Last revised: 7 Aug 2020

See all articles by Cheng Hua

Cheng Hua

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Arthur Swersey

Yale School of Management

Fernando Chiyoshi

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

Ana Paula Iannoni

Ecole Centrale Paris - Laboratoire Genie Industriel

Reinaldo Morabito

Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFScar) - Department of Production Engineer

Date Written: August 25, 2019

Abstract

We model and evaluate an emergency service system in which cross-trained fire-medics respond to both fire calls and medical emergencies. Compared to the traditional system, adding the server flexibility may be beneficial in terms of both cost savings and response time performance. A cross-trained fire-medic may be in one of three states: available, busy at an emergency medical incident, or busy at a fire call. We develop an exact spatial queuing model and an iterative approximation method that decouples the problem to two simpler systems. We prove that our method has a unique fixed point and provide the convergence condition. We demonstrate numerically that our algorithm will always converge in a few iterations. In constructed examples, performance errors are very small compared to the exact model. We apply our model to the fire-medic system in St. Paul, MN. and find close agreement between predicted and actual average response times. We compare St. Paul’s system to a traditional system having separate engine and medical units with the same number of personnel, and show the very large response time reductions achievable under the fire-medic system. The fire-medic approach and our modeling have widespread applicability to other cities.

Keywords: Service Operations, Stochastic Methods, Queuing Theory, Public Policy, Computer Algorithms

Suggested Citation

Hua, Cheng and Swersey, Arthur and Chiyoshi, Fernando and Iannoni, Ana Paula and Morabito, Reinaldo, Improving Productivity: An Emergency Service System in Which Cross-Trained Fire-Medics Respond to Medical Calls and Fire Incidents (August 25, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3442657 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3442657

Cheng Hua (Contact Author)

Shanghai Jiao Tong University ( email )

1954 Huashan Rd
Shanghai, Shanghai 20030
China

Arthur Swersey

Yale School of Management ( email )

135 Prospect Street
P.O. Box 208200
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
United States

Fernando Chiyoshi

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) ( email )

Av; Pasteur, 250
terreo - Bairro Maracana
Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 23890000
Brazil

Ana Paula Iannoni

Ecole Centrale Paris - Laboratoire Genie Industriel ( email )

Grande Voie des Vignes
Chatenay-Malabry, 92295
France

Reinaldo Morabito

Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFScar) - Department of Production Engineer ( email )

Rodovia Washington Luis (SP-310), Km 235
Sao Carlos, Sao Paulo 13565-905
Brazil

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