KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The Kansas City Fire Department has unveiled four pilot projects to relieve an overworked ambulance crew to elicit quicker response times.
Fire management and labor officials say they’ve reached an agreement on how to start fixing issues with slow response times and overworking, according to the Kansas City Star.
“The workload for the ambulance side of the Fire Department is substantial,” firefighters union president Mike Cambiano said in a report. “They were being a run a lot harder than they should have been. This is about changing their work conditions...”
A new workflow has been proposed to balance the department. Fully equipped ambulances will respond to high-priority calls while less-equipped ambulances and fire trucks will go to lower priority calls.
“The whole goal is not to assume that everybody needs the same thing, but to deliver the right thing,” Joseph Salomone, director of Kansas City’s EMS system said.
While city officials are confident the programs will help reduce response times, City Councilman John Sharp cautions against underestimating the type of care certain patients may need and sending the wrong transport vehicle.
“There are clearly some calls where people want an ambulance and they don’t need an ambulance and they certainly don’t need paramedic level care,” he said. “But you’ve got to be real careful about that.”
Supporters say up to 50,000 calls per year do not require fully equipped paramedics to respond. Currently, paramedics respond to 90,000 calls a year.
Officials have also proposed that paramedics receive training to perform advanced medical interventions on a limited basis as first responders on fire trucks.