Researchers say you live in an 'ambulance desert' if it takes more than 25 minutes to reach you; many places fit the bill

Callers to 911 in rural areas know they will have to wait longer than their city counterparts, but how much longer? And how long do you have to wait to have experts say you're in an "ambulance desert"? A first-of-its-kind study has some answers, including a definition of the desert wait: more than 25 minutee, and there may be far more ambulance deserts than you might think.

Some states are not represented on this map due to their uncertainty about ambulance locations.
(University of Southern Maine map, from Ambulance Deserts: Geographic Disparities study)

The study, by the Maine Rural Health Research Center, looked at every state's ambulance data, and "found a major disparity between rural and urban residents' proximity to ambulance stations, reports Liz Carey of The Daily Yonder. "While less than 1% of urban residents live in an ambulance desert, about 5% of rural Americans live in one. . . . Another way of understanding the rural disparity is that while about 14% of Americans live in a rural area, they make up more than half of the population that lives in an ambulance desert. Urban Americans constitute about 86% of the U.S. population but make up less than half of the population that lives in an ambulance desert."

Carey adds, "Researchers found the highest number of people living in ambulance deserts in the Southern Appalachian region, in Western states with mountainous terrain, and in the rural mountains of Maine, Vermont, Oregon, and Washington. Eight states west of the Mississippi had fewer than three ambulances covering every 1,000 square miles of land area. The states are Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming."

The number of ambulance desertss can be explained in dollars and cents. Ambulance services are only reimbursed when a patient is transported to the hospital, which leaves many trips unpaid. Lead researcher Yvonne Jonk told Carey: "Hospitals and health-care systems are not going after ambulance services because they are not a lucrative service line. And that's a problem." She said the next step in her research will determine the impact ambulance deserts have on communities, including the prevelance of paramedics and funding options.

Researchers found that some states don't know where their ambulances are. Carey explains, "Part of the research effort was finding physical addresses for ambulance stations, rather than using post-office-box addresses. . . . In nine states, information either wasn't available or was so limited it wasn't included in the report."