Introduction: The pressures facing emergency medical services (EMS) in Wisconsin and their effects on the delivery of prehospital emergency medical care were not known by the Wisconsin EMS Board. In an effort to assess these pressures and the needs of the emergency medical services in the State as perceived by the services, the Board undertook a survey of the EMS providers in Wisconsin.
Methods: A survey instrument was developed and approved by the EMS Board and distributed to all of the licensed emergency medical services in Wisconsin.
Results: Of the 453 survey instruments distributed, 323 (71.3%) were completed and returned. Intermediate- and paramedic-level services were more likely to respond than were the basic services, but 235 (72.8%) of the respondents identified their service levels as basic. In addition to providing information about the service characteristics, each responding service also rated the importance of their perceived needs. Lack of medical direction was perceived as the greatest need by all levels of service. However, the second greatest area of need for basic and intermediate services related to difficulty in recruiting new staff. For paramedic services, the second greatest need was associated with dispatching. When comparing services by rural versus urban, difficulty in recruiting new staff and collecting ambulance fees were seen as second and third to lack of a medical director by rural services, whereas urban services noted local training to be in the top three. In the assessment of educational needs, patient-care issues dominated. A review of written comments also demonstrated a difference between rural and urban services, but both noted Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement issues more commonly than any other problem.
Conclusions: In the restructuring of health care, it will be important to consider the various needs of prehospital providers and recognize that such needs may be unique to the providers' location and level of service.