Response times for emergency medical services and the county’s protocol for “no crew” units will change in the newest EMS System Response Plan, which goes into effect at midnight Oct. 1.
The changes will keep EMS agencies in compliance with state laws to provide around-the-clock ambulance coverage, Luzerne County 911 Director Fred Rosencrans said. They are intended to provide faster responses to emergency calls in the county.
The goal is improving a service in which citizens have asked for improvement, Rosencrans said.
“Already, we’re hearing agencies saying they’re going to go out of business, that Rosencrans is against volunteers. That’s the farthest thing from the truth. This helps agencies because when we pass a countywide plan, volunteer agencies stay in compliance,” he said. “The Department of Health, they don’t want a patchwork of plans across the county. They want one plan for the entire county.”
Under previous protocols, dispatchers called for the first unit due for up to nine minutes before calling the second unit.
Now, dispatchers will only call for up to six minutes before trying the second unit.
Toning continues until a unit is on the road. Other responses, such as replying that a crew is assembling or will be en route soon, won’t suffice.
Dispatchers also won’t automatically put EMS units that fail to “crew” back in service.
Units received a “no crew” status when they failed to assemble a response to 911 calls, but they were automatically put back on a list of available agencies at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m. each day. Now, those units will remain unavailable and dispatchers won’t call on them until the agency notifies the 911 supervisor that they now have a crew available.
The previous policy led to multiple examples of agencies failing to respond to a request for help from 911. Most of the “no crew” calls comes from basic life support units carrying EMTs to handle basic, mostly non-life threatening emergencies, but some agencies were missing more than a dozen calls per month because they didn’t assemble crews. With no crew, emergency responses were delayed.
If an agency isn’t available, and it informs county 911, dispatchers automatically skip that agency when requesting help. The agency isn’t penalized.
“That’s exactly what we want. We don’t want to tone an agency for six minutes and they don’t respond, which delays patient care for six minutes,” Rosencrans said.
The new protocol also says that municipalities must discuss the choice for EMS agencies that respond if the initial responders are unavailable — so-called “second-due” and “third-due” units.
Some municipalities have bypassed closer options to request agencies from several towns away. State law specifies that municipalities only have the right to choose their primary responder. County 911 officials or the EMS committee that created the new protocols can choose the second-due and third-due units, Rosencrans said.
The plan says that any second-due responders that aren’t practical will be denied. Officials will provide an explanation and choose another unit using the distance from the responder’s station to the center of the municipality.
The goal for responding agencies is to receive a response rate of at least 95 percent. Units that don’t meet the standard for at least three months during a six-month period will meet with officials from Emergency Medical Services of Northeastern Pennsylvania, a regional EMS council in the region. If response rates don’t improve, EMS of NEPA will “seek guidance” with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the state agency that oversees EMS responses.
“Seek guidance” is a purposely ambiguous term, Rosencrans said, because the department is the final arbiter of EMS in the state. Its officials will decide how to enforce state EMS laws and whether to sanction or aid a local EMS unit.
“We are trying to facilitate the wishes of citizens for patient care and a prompt response,” he said. “It’s not the 911 center trying to make life hell for volunteers. It is us trying to fulfill regulations and requirement under the EMS Act.”
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