Incorporating Coverage for Emergency Calls in Scheduling Patient Transportation

Many ambulance providers operate both advanced life support (ALS) and basic life support (BLS) ambulances. Typically, emergency calls can only be executed by ALS vehicles, whereas non-urgent patient transportations can either be served by an ALS or a BLS ambulance. BLS vehicle capacity does normally not suffice for all transportation requests. The remaining transportations are performed by ALS ambulances, which reduces coverage for emergency calls. We present a model to determine routes for BLS vehicles, so as to maximize the remaining coverage by ALS ambulances. The model is applied to the region of Utrecht to find better shift schedules for their BLS ambulances.