GEORGETOWN, Texas — Six months after the implementation of a new type of emergency system, a Texas Fire Department is ironing out the kinks and evaluating the effectiveness of the program.
KXAN.com reported the City of Georgetown discontinued the use of county ambulances and now relies on the Georgetown Fire Department to respond to emergency medical calls. The move to a fire-based EMS service was made in an attempt to save money for the city. With the new system, the city will be able to recoup more of the costs for an average patient and there will be lower operating costs for ambulances.
The department started running three ambulances in October and added a fourth in January because of a rise in call numbers. Since beginning the combination fire and EMS services, the department has struggled to meet national standards for response times.
“There are a couple different standards out there that talk to the arrival times — ideally to have a paramedic with advanced care capability to arrive within 8 minutes 59 seconds, 90 percent of the time. Our initial analysis shows we were there about 80 percent of the time,” said Georgetown Fire Chief John Sullivan.
Reports from the previous year showed Williamson County EMS made their response times 92 percent of the time when the county ambulances were still running.
“What I worry about if we fragment the system, in the first several years, in my personal opinion, there’s going to be an A team and a B team. I don’t know how else to put it,” said John Sneed, Williamson County EMS Director. “There is going to have to be time where the City of Georgetown will have to catch up.”
Chief Sullivan said the department has been hiring paramedics and cross-training them as firefighters. The fire-based EMS crews are trained to be able to do everything a standard EMS crew would do.
“[These days] you don’t see smoke billowing in the air as you drive through communities. What you do see are motor vehicle collisions, hazardous materials spills, swift water rescues in flood prone areas,” Sullivan said.
Over the next six months, the department plans to have a paramedic on each of the five fire trucks in the city. The rigs will be equipped with gear similar to what is found on an ambulance.