By Jennifer Learn-Andes
The Times-Leader
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney said his data show the city’s emergency medical responders got to the scene in an average 6.1 minutes.
But a new state Department of Health performance study leaves a different impression, saying 12.5 percent, or 2,725 of calls in Wilkes-Barre had response times over 16 minutes.
The difference: Calls handled by all responders are lumped together in the state report, which means slower ones can skew the overall time reported for each municipality.
Delaney and several other county emergency officials are taking issue with the study, which was released by county council’s 911 inquiry committee last week.
It’s rare a response by the city department would take more than 16 minutes, Delaney said. That scenario would only happen during a high-traffic period for an emergency that did not rise to the severity where lights and sirens can be used, he said.
“I want our residents to go to sleep at night knowing they have quality service. We really get the job done here and spend a lot of tax dollars to provide the best service,” Delaney said.
The state study said 8.36 percent of calls in Kingston — 278 out of 3,327 — had response times over 16 minutes.
“Our numbers are much better than what is shown,” said Kingston Fire Chief Frank Guido.
Crews from the Kingston-Forty Fort Fire Department community ambulance usually are on scene within three- to five minutes, Guido said.
“I would be shocked if we had more than two calls over 16 minutes in a year,” Guido said.
Delaney said his responders are usually administering aid within three minutes for heart attacks or severe trauma incidents in which crews are legally permitted to use lights and sirens to get through traffic faster.
The state, which completed the performance study at the request of state senators representing the county, used 16 minutes as a benchmark because data showed 90 percent of all response times countywide were at or below that time.
Wilkes-Barre had the most calls — 21,724 — of all municipalities from July 1, 2012, through Dec. 31, 2013, which was the period examined in the report.
Delaney said the Wilkes-Barre Fire Department Emergency Medical Service responded to 9,969 emergency medical calls in the city during the time period covered by the study.
Another 876 city calls dispatched through county 911 were handled by other responders when too many calls came in simultaneously, bringing the total calls to 10,845, he said.
The remaining 10,879 calls tracked in the state study were not routed through 911, which means residents or businesses contacted ambulance providers for assistance on their own, officials said. A state official indicated most, if not all, of these calls were from nursing homes or personal care homes, he said.
“That’s a huge difference, and all of that data is in this report together,” Delaney said, noting the city has several elderly care facilities.
There’s also a question of whether some responders are properly coding emergency calls in patient care reports that were the basis for the state’s statistics.
If a nursing home doesn’t require a responder to hurry to its facility to transport a resident to the hospital, the response may be considered a basic transport as opposed to an emergency, officials said.
The state study focused only on responses for medical emergencies in which an ambulance was needed immediately.
Guido said there are five nursing facilities in his municipality that may request ambulances on their own instead of through 911.
“Because of the nursing home data, I think that flaws the numbers immensely,” Guido said.
The study was intended to provide state and local officials with an overview snapshot of response times for all emergency medical calls in each municipality, which is why it did not segregate ones dispatched through 911.
Municipal officials specify which responders are dispatched first within their borders for 911 emergency medical calls, but individuals and businesses have the right to call any ambulance for help on their own if they don’t go through 911, officials said.
Responders took more than 16 minutes to arrive on scene for at least 30 percent of calls in 15 municipalities, the study said. County council’s 911 inquiry committee has scheduled a public meeting to discuss the study at 5 p.m. Wednesday in the council meeting room, followed by a public forum on emergency response issues at 6 p.m.
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©2015 The Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)