St. Joseph News-Press (Missouri)
Copyright 2006 St. Joseph News-Press
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
The numbers looked grim for Heartland Health’s ambulance service just a year ago.
Slow response times had triggered enough community concern that Heartland formed the Ambulance Service Response Task Force. The task force hired Fitch and Associates out of Platte City, Mo., to examine the community’s ambulance response times.
The report found that Heartland ambulances met the nearly nine-minute benchmark for priority one and two calls 73 percent of the time. The industry standard is 90 percent.
The study also shows that Fire Department first-responders met the six-minute response target 69.4 percent of the time the industry standard is 90 percent.
The 46-page Fitch report made 59 recommendations. The top of the list began with a call for a dramatic increase in the money invested in Heartland Paramedics, a privately run service that falls under the Heartland administrative umbrella.
Heartland officials offered a scorecard recently on an $800,000 investment in the system.
In November of last year, for example, the service had six ambulances on St. Joseph and surrounding streets. Now there are eight. Last year, ambulances deployed only from the hospital. As of October, they are at seven strategic locations around the city. Statistical analysis on response times also have shown marked improvements, according to Heartland officials.
Previously, two 24-hour ambulances and one peak-hour ambulance (10 a.m. to 10 p.m.) were staffed seven days a week around St. Joseph. Now, three 24-hour ambulances are ready, with an extra during peak hours. A fifth supervisory ambulance is anchored at the hospital.
The improvements are already paying dividends. For life-threatening emergencies in the city, ambulances reach the victim 86 percent of the time within the national nine minute benchmark. For non-life-threatening calls in the city, response within the 12 minute national benchmark has improved from 64 to 98 percent.
Outside the city limits, response on life-threatening emergencies within the 19 minute and 49 seconds goal has improved 64 to 88 percent. For non-life threatening emergencies, it has gone from 64 percent to 89 percent in the 19 minute and 59 seconds goal. Heartland officials predict a 90 percent compliance on all levels next year.
The improvements are impressive and applauded. But it should also be noted that some of the changes -- stationing ambulances around the city based on demand patterns -had been part of the system in the not so distant past.
The Fitch study also reported that current ambulance response times were not being measured or reported adequately. The task force can prevent a repeat of this headache by routinely monitoring the response times.