Emergency Medical Services Cost Analysis Project (EMSCAP)

Under a grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, five collaborators investigated how to determine the community cost for an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system. Dr. Brooke Lerner of the Medical College of Wisconsin lead the project along with Dr. Ronald Maio of the University of Michigan, Dr. Herbert Garrison of the East Carolina University, Dr. Daniel Spaite of the University of Arizona, and Dr. Graham Nichol of the University of Washington. They first determined that no uniform method of determining EMS cost existed in the literature.

Lerner EB, Maio RF, Garrison HG, Spaite DW, Nichol G: Economic Value of Prehospital Emergency Care: A Structured Literature Review. Annals of Emergency Medicine 2006;47(6):515-2

Next, they developed a comprehensive framework for calculating EMS costs.

Lerner EB, Nichol G, Spaite DW, Garrison HG, Maio RF: A Comprehensive Framework for Determining the Cost of an Emergency Medical Services System. Annals of Emergency Medicine 2007;49:304-313

Finally they developed a workbook that users could follow to calculate the cost of EMS services in their community. The workbook was pilot-tested in Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Richmond, Virginia; and Livingston County, New York and is available through the links below:

EMSCAP Workbook (XLS)
EMSCAP Workbook Guide (PDF)

Lerner EB, Garrison HG, Nichol G, Maio RF, Lookman HA, Sheahan WD, Franz TR, Austad JD, Ginster AM, Spaite DW: An Economic Toolkit for Identifying the Cost of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Systems: Detailed Methodology of the EMS Cost Analysis Project (EMSCAP). Academic Emergency Medicine 2012;19(2):210-16

For more information about the study, please contact Brooke Lerner, PhD.