In order to shorten response time, Zagreb is introducing motorcycle EMS.
The Institute for Emergency Medicine and the City of Zagreb have introduced motorcycle emergency medical service in order to reduce the response time. The project was presented on Wednesday at a press conference, reports Index.hr on July 13, 2016.
Zagreb Mayor Milan Bandić pointed out that, in a situation when every second counts to save a human life, physicians on motorcycles can come sooner than in vehicles. He noted that the pilot project was similar to projects in other modern and developed European cities.
Head of the City Department of Health Mirna Šitum stressed that Zagreb was one of the cities when such a service was necessary due to traffic congestion and ambulances not being able to get through. She added that she hoped the Ministry of Health would introduce similar service in other Croatian cities as well.
Explaining the project, Dubravko Huljev, director of the Institute for Emergency Medicine, said that service would include one motorcycle with a trained medical technician who will provide emergency medical treatment in Zagreb during the day, from 7 am to 7 pm. He emphasized that it was expected that the response time in critical cases would be shortened by between 30 and 50 percent.
The initial location of the team will be in the centre of the city, and this location was chosen because it covers an area with the most traffic congestion during the day and because the waiting time for emergency medical care in this part of the city is the longest. If necessary, the team would be relocated to other areas of high traffic congestion.
Huljev said that the motorcycle team would be accompanied by a regular ambulance which would take over as soon as it arrived at the scene. Last year, the Institute for Emergency Medicine had a total of 92,377 emergency medical interventions, an average of 253 interventions per day. According to European and Croatian guidelines, the response time for the first level of urgency should be within 10 minutes.
