County emergency medical communications in a high density urban area with dynamic frequency assignments

Abstract

The County of San Mateo, California, through its Health and Welfare Department, with cooperation from the Communications Division of the Department of General Services, has purchased and installed a County-wide Communications System, as planned by the Emergency Medical Care Committee, for the expressed purpose of allowing those personnel responding to an emergency medical need to cooperate fully and quickly to that need. Since San Mateo County is one of nine counties in the San Francisco Bay Emergency Medical Service (EMS) Area, it was extremely critical that proper planning of a dynamic communication system responsive to the users be done while still accomplishing regionwide cooperation for the dynamic use of all UHF Med channels. The geographic and demographic conditions of the County are similar to other Bay Area counties, in that major population centers and large cities are clustered together on flat to semi-hilly lands, usually along San Francisco Bay, while a range of mountain ridges splits the County into several difficult areas for radio communications. Much of the south and western parts of the County are rural, rugged areas along a sparsely populated coast. The north and eastern portions are well populated living and industrial areas, which have high growth rates. Therefore, the EMS Comunication System was designed to help fulfill the Emergency Medical Care Committee's objective of providing a prompt, efficient, and high level of care to those encountering a medical emergency anywhere in the County.