Abstract
The St John's Ambulance Service, Southern Region Control Centre (the control centre) is located in Dunedin City and controls 56 ambulances based in 26 regional stations. The Southern Region covers an area of approximately 54,000 square kilometres, which has a usually resident population of 272,541 (Census, 2001). This report focuses on the dispatch and workload profile of the control centre between the 1st January 1997 and the 31st December 2001. During this period the control centre dispatched ambulances on approximately 135,822 occasions to a total of 118,759 incidents (this includes both emergency incidents and patient transfers). Based on an analysis of these incidents several key findings are discussed in this report. These include:
• A 21.8% increase in the total number of incidents handled in the control centre between 1997 and 2001
• A 44 second increase in average activation times between 1997 and 2001
• A strong correlation between increased workload and increased activation times
• A large increase in activation times during low and medium workload periods