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Operations & systems
Critical care attendance driven by distance, not deprivation
Geographic Inequalities in Prehospital Critical Care for Cardiac Arrest: A Spatial Analysis of Deprivation and Service Configuration
Resuscitation · Added 14 May 2026
This spatial analysis examined how deprivation levels and prehospital critical care service configuration affect cardiac arrest outcomes, revealing persistent geographic disparities in access and survival.
- Study type
- Cross-sectional
- Design
- Spatial analysis of ambulance service data
- Participants
- 57,601 OHCA patients across 9,639 English neighbourhoods
- Main finding
- Median neighbourhood prehospital critical care attendance was 25.0%; attendance clustered geographically and was associated with distance to nearest critical care base. Accounting for spatial dependence removed the association with deprivation.
- Caveat
- English ambulance services only; aggregated neighbourhood-level data rather than individual patient analysis.
- Bottom line
- Context only
Learning goal
Understand how service configuration and geography shape equitable access to prehospital critical care across Australian communities.
More
- Topic: Operations & systems
- Daily scan: 14 May 2026
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