title: Time is money, but how much? The monetary value of response time for Thai ambulance emergency services.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To calculate the monetary value of the time factor per minute and per year for emergency services.
  
  
  METHODS
  The monetary values for ambulance emergency services were calculated for two different time factors, response time, which is the time from when a call is received by the emergency medical service call-taking center until the response team arrives at the emergency scene, and operational time, which includes the time to the hospital. The study was performed in two steps. First, marginal effects of reduced fatalities and injuries for a 1-minute change in the time factors were calculated. Second, the marginal effects and the monetary values were put together to find a value per minute.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The values were found to be 5.5 million Thai bath/min for fatality and 326,000 baht/min for severe injury. The total monetary value for a 1-minute improvement for each dispatch, summarized over 1 year, was 1.6 billion Thai baht using response time.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The calculated values could be used in a cost-benefit analysis of an investment reducing the response time. The results from similar studies could for example be compared to the cost of moving an ambulance station or investing in a new alarm system.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Karlstad University, Karlstad, Sweden. Electronic address: henrik.jaldell@kau.se.
authors.forename: Henrik
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jaldell
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medical Institute Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand.
authors.forename: Prachaksvich
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lebnak
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medical Institute Thailand, Bangkok, Thailand.
authors.forename: Anurak
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Amornpetchsathaporn
mesh_terms: D000552:Ambulances / Q000191:economics* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000191:economics* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D018803:Models, Economic; D013785:Thailand; D013997:Time Factors; D061665:Time-to-Treatment
keywords: cost-benefit; emergency medical service; medicine; response time