Medical emergency motorcycle – is it useful in a Scandinavian Emergency Medical Service?

BACKGROUND: Medical emergency motorcycles (MEM) can be used in time-critical conditions like cardiac arrest and multi-traumatized patients in an attempt to reduce the response time. Other potential benefits with MEM are more efficient patient evaluation, reduction of unnecessary EMS car ambulance missions and reduced cost. The potential benefits have been evaluated in this study. The incidence of accidents when operating the vehicle was also of interest. METHODS: A prospective study was performed when MEM was introduced as a trial in an urban ambulance service in Norway. RESULTS: A total of 703 MEM missions were registered in the period. The mean emergency driving time was significantly shorter for the MEM than for the ambulance car located at the same station (6 min 24 seconds vs. 6 min 54 seconds). In addition to time-critical conditions, the MEM was used to evaluate patients when the need for emergency medical assistance was uncertain, and this practice lead to a reduced number of unnecessary car ambulance missions. No accidents involving the MEM were registered in the study period. The hourly cost of running the MEM was 29 euro vs. 75 euro for a car ambulance. However, the actual cost benefit is smaller since the weather conditions make it impossible to run a MEM in wintertime. CONCLUSION: The small reduction in driving time when using a MEM instead of a car ambulance was statistically significant but probably of little clinical importance. The number of unnecessary car ambulance missions was reduced. It was cheaper to operate a MEM than a car ambulance, but the cost-effectiveness was reduced since the MEM could not operate 12 months a year. The lack of accidents may be contributed to the extensive training of the drivers and the fact that the vehicle was operated in daylight only.