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Operations & systems
Ditch lights and sirens for fall-alarm calls
Decreasing response phase lights and siren use through modification of dispatch priority response for 9-1-1 responses to personal emergency response system activations: an interventional study
Prehospital Emergency Care · 2026-10-16 · Added 19 October 2026
Before-after study switching medical-alert (PERS) activations to non-lights-and-siren dispatch — L&S response fell from 98% to 12% of calls and response-phase L&S hours dropped 86%, with only 0.2% of calls later needing an upgrade to L&S transport.
- Study type
- Cohort
- Design
- Retrospective pre-post interventional analysis with interrupted time series
- Participants
- 3,262 PERS activations (1,634 pre, 1,628 post)
- Main finding
- L&S response fell from 98% to 12% of calls and total response-phase L&S hours from 172 to 24 per month (−86%); 4 post-change calls (0.2%) needed L&S transport, only 1 requiring advanced interventions
- Caveat
- Single-agency before-after design with no concurrent control, and the very low acuity of these calls makes harm hard to detect.
- Bottom line
- Hypothesis-generating
Why it matters in Australia (High relevance). Response-mode assignment and lights-and-siren policy are universal operational levers, and community alarm activations are a low-acuity call type every Australian service handles.
Learning goal
Understand how dispatch triage for personal emergency response activations can reduce lights and siren risk without compromising patient safety.
More
- Topic: Operations & systems
- Daily scan: 19 October 2026
- Podcast: Paramedic Papers Daily, 19 October 2026
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