Time is money, but how much? The monetary value of response time for Thai ambulance emergency services

The monetary values for how much ambulance emergency services are calculated for two different time factors, response time, which is the time from when a call is received by the EMS call-taking centre until the response team arrives at the emergency scene, and operational time, which is the time from alarm to the accident scene and to the hospital. The study is performed in three steps. First, marginal effects of reduced fatalities and injuries for a minute change of the time factors are calculated using logistic regressions. Second, monetary values are chosen for fatalities and injuries; third, the marginal effects and the monetary values are put together to find a value per minute. The values are found to be 5.5 million Thai Baht per minute for fatality, 326,000 Baht per minute for severe injury, and 2,100 Baht per minute for slight injury. The total value of fatality, severe injury and slight injury for a one-minute improvement for each dispatch, summarized over one year, is 1.6 billion Thai Baht using response time. The resulting total values could be used on the benefit side in an economic cost-benefit analysis of investments, such as new technology, which could reduce the response and operational times.