By Aaron Hale
Naples Daily News
NAPLES, Fla. — Two episodes of slow ambulance response times in Naples this year prompted Collier County Emergency Medical Services to bolster its communication with the city’s emergency response staff.
Partly to blame for those communication breakdowns in Naples is a system that has one responding agency, the city of Naples Fire-Rescue Department, being directed by the city’s dispatch center, while the other, Collier County EMS, is sent by a separate agency at the Collier County Sheriff’s Office.
Collier EMS Chief Jeff Page said that arrangement created gaps in response times, in which Naples firefighters sometimes arrived to a medical scene before ambulance personnel even learned of a call, leaving patients to wait sometimes 10 minutes or more to be transported to the hospital.
Now, Collier EMS, which handles hospital transport throughout the county, is rolling out system upgrades to ensure its personnel are on the same wavelength as the Naples fire department.
Page announced that Collier ambulances within the city now will receive direction from the Naples Dispatch Center, which is run through the Naples Police Department. The move allows for direct radio communication between Naples dispatch officers and county ambulance staff for medical calls in the city.
The decision comes after weeks of meetings between Page and Naples Fire Chief Steve McInerny.
McInerny has been pushing for more effective ambulance service in the city since March, when it took a county ambulance 20 minutes to reach a patient at a Third Street South restaurant, nearly
15 minutes after the Naples fire engine arrived.
In another call that month, a Collier EMS ambulance got lost on its way to an 82-year-old patient complaining of weakness and loss of appetite.
In that case, EMS personnel arrived on scene nearly 15 minutes after the emergency call initially was placed and 10 minutes after city of Naples firefighters arrived.
The patient later died after cardiac arrest in the ambulance during transport to the hospital, according to county reports.
McInerny said the recent cooperation between the two agencies has been especially beneficial in improving public safety in Naples.
“We’ve always had a good working relationship,” he said. “Sometimes we may philosophically have disagreements, but we have the same goal in mind, which is to provide the best service to our citizens.”
Before this most recent change, a medical 911 call in the city of Naples would first go to the Naples Dispatch Center, which would get the address and description of the call. Naples Dispatch would send a fire engine staffed with a paramedic to the scene before transferring the call to the sheriff’s dispatch center.
Sheriff’s dispatch officers ask a series of questions to 911 callers before sending an ambulance unit. They employ a commonly used system called Emergency Medical Dispatch, in which callers’ answers to questions about the patient are entered into a computer algorithm that determines the severity of a medical call.
Dispatch officers then determine what kind of resources should be sent to the emergency, based on that algorithm’s diagnosis.
Now, Naples dispatch is able to send both a city fire engine and a county ambulance to a medical call, while the Sheriff’s Office still will process the severity of the emergency.
Page and McInerny previously agreed to install Naples dispatch radio units in EMS stations inside the city, but there was no direct communication to ambulance personnel. The county has placed an additional ambulance unit inside the city, as well. That vehicle was relocated from a Pelican Bay station in North Naples, which previously had fielded two ambulances.
Page said he doesn’t expect the changes in Naples to affect the rest of the county. EMS ambulances in the city still will be available for medical calls in other parts of the county.
The county, in coordination with city of Naples agencies, is looking at vehicle communication software upgrades to allow the Naples dispatch staff to track the location of county ambulances, even when leaving city limits.
“Their dispatchers are going to be incorporating our units into their dispatch centers where they are actually able to monitor our progress,” Page said.
McInerny estimated the cost of the upgrade, which will be absorbed by the county, could be about $3,500 per unit for software licensing fees.
Collier EMS ambulances outside the city still will rely on the Collier Sheriff’s Office for dispatch services in the rest of the county.
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