PHC services particularly the ambulance call is traditionally a hospital-based system. Within the Kota Kinabalu area, there are 3 tertiary hospitals that provide the ambulance call service; and also provide the interfacility transfer, disaster management and medical team standby. How about the health clinics? Health clinics play a major role for primary healthcare and the interfacility transfer of patient from the health clinics to the hospital.
Ambulance response time (ART) has an inseparable relationship with mortality rates and therefore is important to be reduced. However, an unprecedented increase in road traffic congestion has led to longer ART, especially during peak hours. To reduce ART despite congested traffic, a pre-dispatched ambulance is deployed at hotspot locations during peak hours. This study aims to determine if the hotspot strategy is able to reduce ART in an Urban Emergency Medical Services system.