4-rescue-region model for the canton of Bern

The Institute for Modeling and Simulation at the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland (IMS-OST) was commissioned by the Health, Social Affairs, and Integration Directorate of the Canton of Bern (GSI) to examine the status and development potential of ground-based rescue services in the canton of Bern.

The project focused on the question of how a limited number of resources in the canton (and among the eight existing rescue services) can be distributed in such a way that the population in all parts of the canton receives the most “equitable” care possible and the rescue services are on a “level playing field.”

This led to the creation of the “4-rescue-region model,” which provides a framework for assessing regional balance while ensuring that no new artificial boundaries are drawn between rescue services that would undermine operational cooperation in the spirit of “next-best” across the entire canton.

The “4-rescue-region model” defines four regions for this purpose. These are “Bern + (BERN+)”, “Bernese Oberland (BO)”, “Mittelland, Emmental, Oberaargau (MEOA)”, and “Seeland, Jura, Biel (SJB)”. The existing and potential bases were then assigned to these regions.

Simulation was used to answer the question of how resources should be distributed to enable the regions to develop “optimally” under “similar” conditions. “Similar” means that: i) the three rural regions should perform approximately equally well in the simulator; ii) an aid response rate of 90% of P1 events within 20 minutes should be exceeded for each region; iii) the remaining resources should be deployed where the deployment density is highest, thereby contributing to the canton-wide optimization of aid response times.

“Optimal” means distributing limited resources geographically and temporally in such a way that: i) a minimum quality of care is guaranteed in all four regions; ii) the remaining resources are distributed in such a way that the canton-wide response time is maximized.