Importance of Analyzing Intervals to Emergency Medical Service Treatments.

Background: Although most US emergency medical services (EMS) systems collect time-to-treatment data in their electronic prehospital patient care reports (PCRs), analysis of these data seldom appears in publications. We believe EMS agencies should routinely analyze the initial time-to-treatment data for various potentially life-threatening conditions. This not only assures that protocol-required treatments have been provided but can discover avoidable delays and drive protocol/treatment priority change.