Abstracto
- Those in need of emergency health care can't wait. Ambulances should arrive at the scene as quickly as possible. Ambulances are usually assigned to bases, which are distributed throughout the city to minimize the time to arrive at the event. However, the spatial distribution of events changes throughout the day, due to the rhythm and use that people make of the city. This article evaluates, by means of location-assignment models, the spatiotemporal performance of SAMUR-PC, the Emergency Medical Service of Madrid (Spain) in two different scenarios, before the COVID-19 pandemic and during the first months of the new normal. The results show that the system responded relatively well to the change in patterns of events due to the pandemic, although some interventions would have been necessary to ensure the same service as before the epidemiological crisis.