How is Ambulance Patient Care and Response Time Data Collected and Reported in Malaysia and Indonesia?

Ambulance service design is often reminiscent of the economic status of a country, with pre-hospital care in low to medium income countries relying on basic life support services and an historical ‘swoop and scoop’ Anglo-American emergency medical service model. The connection between pre-hospital intervention and patient outcome in low to medium income countries is unclear. This scoping study undertook an examination of the literature to establish the level and quality of patient care data collection, especially as it impacts ambulance case times in Malaysia and Indonesia. Methods A scoping review methodology with topic specific keywords including ‘ambulance’, ‘emergency medical service’, ‘pre-hospital’ (and their variants) using MEDLINE, CINAHL, Cochrane and EMBase databases was used. Results Of the 202 articles returned, 185 were screened, 85 full text articles were reviewed for relevance. Forty-three publications were included in the study with a number of other relevant from the grey literature. Conclusion The scoping study found there is no consistency in data collection methods in Indonesian or Malaysia, with some organisations collecting high quality data while others do not collect pre-hospital data. The study recommends deeper investigation into the status of standardisation of emergency medical services in the two countries and the manner in which the data is reported.