By ADAM BEAM
The State (Columbia, S.C.)
Brian Hoods favorite game is find the address.
The Lexington County EMS director shows slides of mailboxes to neighborhood watch groups. He gives them three seconds to read address numbers before moving on to the next slide.
“Is this what you want (Emergency Medical Services workers) hunting for?” Hood asks, showing a picture of a black mailbox with small, chalk numbers, probably written by a mail carrier. “220 is not too hard to find when you are 6 inches from the sign.”
Tired of searching for brass letters on wood backgrounds at night Lexington County EMS is setting up an electronic mapping system to make it easier for ambulance drivers to find addresses.
The $520,000 project involves sending electronic maps to touch-screen computers mounted by the front seats of ambulances.
County dispatchers already have access to the electronic maps. Dispatchers can watch ambulances move and see how fast they are traveling.
This project would beam those maps to ambulances through the Palmetto 800 MHz radio system, a statewide communications system used by emergency service workers.
When a call comes in, a map on the screen would show where the ambulance is and where it must go. As the ambulance moves, so would the map. Hood said he hopes the system will be in place by March.
“We would not have to rely anymore on paper maps,” Hood said.
The project is intended to help EMS workers find houses faster, but Hood said it doesnt cancel out homeowners responsibility to properly display addresses.
“It’s going to get me in the vicinity a whole lot faster, but if I have to search for an address number that is still not there, then we are still going to be delayed.”
Hood could not provide a specific instance when finding an address caused a delay in responding to an emergency, but said it has happened.
The money to pay for the project will come from state and local taxes on phone bills. Every phone line in Lexington County carries a 50-cent-per-month charge for a 911 support fund.
Public Safety director Bruce Rucker said the county is watching the EMS program closely to see whether it can be used by fire and sheriff’s departments.
“I hope it is not just limited to EMS,” Rucker said.
The department is counting on an electronic filing system to cut down on paperwork, too. Similar systems have been successful in Charleston and Greenville counties.
EMS workers now fill out reports by hand, detailing their treatment of patients. State law requires the reports to be sent to the Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Hood said someone works full time driving to all the county EMS substations to pick up the reports, check for errors, and package and ship them to the health department.
“Sometimes we have to bring an ambulance off the street to help,” Hood said.
For the past three weeks, EMS workers have filed paperwork electronically on 22 laptops the county bought. They also have filed it the old-fashioned way just to make absolutely certain that database integrity is strong, Hood said. The department is scheduled to drop the paper reporting system in February.
Hood said the new technology will help the department do more with fewer employees. The department has 22 openings for 12 paramedics, nine emergency medical technicians and one supervisor.
Charleston EMS director Don Lundy said electronic reporting is the best thing that ever happened to the documentation of patient care if you have the patience to perfect it.
“I think a lot of people get the electronic format and expect it to work instantly,” Lundy said. “Take your time, expect mistakes, get a big bottle of aspirin, and be prepared for lots of little glitches.”