SIREN comes to the rescue in Melbourne

In 2001, The British Medical Journal published some disturbing and very sobering research.

It showed that an additional 3000 heart attack victims in the UK could be saved each year if 90% of calls were dealt with in 8 minutes. Add to that a daily multitude of other emergencies, and it's very easy to understand why the ambulance service itself is in critical condition.

The Metropolitan Ambulance Service in Victoria, Australia, was suffering from the same symptoms. It provides emergency medical response services to over 3.5 million people in metropolitan Melbourne. But in 2003, it was struggling to do so. In that year they responded to 250,000 emergency incidents, and with call volumes rising by 8% every year, they were faced with the typical modern-day conundrum of doing a whole lot more with a whole lot less.

"The problem was, we were being driven essentially by our past practices, so we couldn't analyze new ideas. We needed a rigorous model that allowed us the flexibility to look at any change we could imagine", said Alex Currell, General Manager Strategic Planning at MAS

MAS selected Optima's SIREN tool for resource optimization, and embarked on a project to customize the system to their requirements.

By simulating of 200 possible scenarios SIREN identified and prioritized strategies that helped MAS improve their performance.

It filtered out all the dead-ends and "long ways home" to improve response times, and included the referral of lower priority cases to an alternative service (such as GP). It also looked at introducing an increased number of mixed-crew units based on the differing level of paramedic qualification, and investigated an increase in the number of rapid response units.

It was very important for us to be able to plot out the future. We now have a clear pathway forward, and SIREN has a huge capability to do that sort of work. I think it is essential for organizations that are facing that sort of call volume growth that they develop plans to look at the future – you can't just wait for it to happen.