Measures to remedy the imbalance between the demand and supply of medical resources, based on emergency transfers from various firefighting areas

Abstract

  Our hospital is the only critical care center in a region with a population of 420,000. In 2013, the number of emergency transfers of patients to our center exceeded 8,000/year, and there were many cases of difficulty receiving the emergency transportation. Herein we sought to improve the demand‒and‒supply imbalance of medical resources based on the number of emergency transfers from a number of firefighting areas in our hospital's region. The total number of emergency transfers in each of four firefighting areas in 2011‒2017 and the number of emergency transfers to our hospital were counted: 7,531 in 2011, 7,698 in 2012, 8,348 in 2013, 8,662 in 2014, 7,847 in 2015, 7,175 in 2016, 7,241 in 2017. The emergency transfers from firefighting areas A, C, and D coincided with this transition of the total number of emergency transfers, but in area B only, the number of emergency transfers gradually decreased. Area B patients were transported not only to our hospital but also to secondary medical facilities in the area. The close cooperation of primary and secondary medical facilities is necessary to resolve the imbalance between the demand and supply of medical resources.