The current personnel shortages in the emergency services don’t spare public safety answering points (PSAPs) and call centers – telecommunicators like call-takers and dispatchers are in short supply too. A 2023 survey by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch revealed an average vacancy rate of around 25% in U.S. 911 centers from 2019–2022,1 and another a year later by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) found 75% of emergency communications centers lacked the funds to expand their workforce.2 Even worse, in NENA’s findings: Of centers with the means to hire, 82% still had trouble filling vacancies, and half of trainees didn’t complete their probationary periods.
Those shortfalls can mean longer wait times for 911 callers and delays in getting units dispatched, not to mention tolls on dispatchers like stress, overtime and burnout. Those all reduce a system’s resilience and are thus important for call centers to address.
Increasingly, technology can help.
“As far as requests for functionality, we get a lot around automation and reducing tasks for users,” said Michael Oldach, a product manager with ZOLL, a prominent provider of software and devices for EMS and hospital personnel. “I think it’s an evolving mindset, and every customer is in a different place with how much automation they expect. If you’re early in that evolution, you still have a lot of manual work for the dispatcher. As an agency matures, it looks for systems to improve efficiency and remove as much of the manual work for dispatchers as possible. So that’s where we’re going.”
Lighten the load on 911 personnel
ZOLL’s signature software solution for lightening the load on those 911 center personnel and getting the right resources to patients quickly is ZOLL Dispatch. A streamlined and highly automated computer-aided dispatch solution, it combines call-taking and dispatch into a single interface built around users’ natural workflows. Part of the company’s cloud-based EMS solution suite, ZOLL Dispatch integrates fully with ZOLL emsCharts and ZOLL Billing.
Among the platform’s labor savings, it supports faster, more informed unit assignment using map-based fleet visibility and real-time traffic context and helps dispatchers monitor fleet location and incidents in progress in a single view. It ranks available crew resources by proximity, traffic and road conditions to facilitate swift response. Departments can see where coverage is thin and where calls are clustering, allowing the smarter deployment of assets. As a cloud-based solution, ZOLL Dispatch is accessible from any web browser, permitting remote dispatching and reducing the need for on-premises infrastructure.
The mobile companion app, ZOLL Respond, works alongside ZOLL Dispatch to transmit information between dispatchers and crews without the need for radio and phone communication. It provides trip management and automatic status updates, embedded GPS-powered navigation and traffic updates, mileage calculations and visual and audible trip alerts.
Across dispatcher/crew interactions, fewer data touchpoints and less manual entry mean faster operations and fewer chances for errors.
“You don’t want a call for every status – you want crews to be able to update their statuses through their MDT and ZOLL Respond,” noted Oldach. “And you want dispatchers to have time to plan ahead with their resources.”
New feature facilitates nonemergent transports
That becomes increasingly important as ambulance organizations venture into arenas beyond 911 response. Many today also conduct interfacility and nonemergency transports in response to growing need and as a way to supplement their bottom lines.
“Ten or 15 years ago, customers’ main focus was emergent calls. But they’ve learned they need a more regular business as well,” said Oldach. “There’s a high demand for nonemergent calls, which can really drive new business and profitability. They want that consistent revenue stream.”
In recognition of that, ZOLL Dispatch has added two new modules: a nonemergent trip scheduling feature and an online portal, Mobile Care Connect, that allows non-transport facilities to request trips directly. Together these two new modules will save time for dispatchers and their partners like long-term care facilities, emergency departments, etc. that need patients moved but lack their own resources. Those time savings can be used to enhance the call center’s ability to plan ahead and maneuver resources efficiently.
“Traditionally, to get something like a kidney dialysis transport scheduled, you’ve had to pick up a phone and play tag between the transporting facility and EMS agency,” explained Oldach. “Now the facility can request that transport directly in the Mobile Care Connect portal, and that request goes straight to the EMS agency’s dispatching software.
“You can’t count on 911 volume for all your revenue – you don’t really know how or when you’re going to get paid,” he added. “Our nonemergent trip scheduling module allows you to plan ahead, ensure you will get paid and confirm you have available capacity. This is what the scheduling feature is really trying to lean into. We want to look at agency resource utilization and help customers review and improve it over time so they can increase their profitability.”
Having that broader, big-picture insight into transports occurring today, tomorrow and next week can help inform crew scheduling and decisions about assigning trucks and personnel. If a coverage plan seemed sufficient yesterday but a truck is unexpectedly sidelined today, it allows easy reconfiguration.
“You can’t just plan once and then forget about it – you have to keep asking, ‘Is this plan still good?’ Oldach noted. “Our system is trying to do as much as we can for the dispatcher while giving them the information to override where they need to.”
Managing planned transports through this dedicated queue takes the task out of the hands of dispatch call-takers, who can thus focus more on 911 calls and urgent patient needs.
‘We wanted to take a leap forward’
In 2024, Wisconsin’s County Rescue Service was looking to replace its software suite. It had moved to an all-in-one product just a couple of years earlier but wasn’t quite getting what it wanted. The service had previous experience with ZOLL emsCharts that helped it feel comfortable returning to ZOLL, and it added ZOLL Dispatch and ZOLL Respond as well.
ZOLL Dispatch replaced a process that had, until not long before, been based on Excel spreadsheets and Microsoft Access databases to track calls.
“We wanted to take a leap forward from paper and pencil, Excel and Access to something a little more integrated,” said EMS Chief Chris Gabryszek. “As we grew, the spreadsheets and all that became challenging, especially when we were trying to pull data. We’ve been focused on that and trying to get a better handle on what we’re doing and where and why.”
It was a difficult setup for discerning trends – how many of X kind of runs, for instance, or how many in Y municipality. The information was there, but ZOLL Dispatch captured it in one spot and made data easier to distill.
In the field, using ZOLL Respond meant crews could mark times more accurately and no longer had to painstakingly type addresses. Data moves seamlessly from dispatch into emsCharts with times, call numbers and other elements standardized. It’s enabled a range of reports, both predefined and custom, and facilitates the easy visualization of data through charts and graphs for executives and stakeholders.
County Rescue employs a dispatcher during weekday business hours, when its interfacility volume is highest, while supervisors handle dispatching at other times. It hasn’t been shorthanded in the area, but it has benefited from the time- and labor-saving features of both ZOLL Dispatch and the broader, integrated ZOLL solution suite.
“From the perspective of moving facilities from one location to the other, making sure addresses and people information kind of flows from one to the other, the product has really evolved,” said Gabryszek. “ZOLL has made a lot of improvements over the last year to enhance the integrations and make things easier to manage.”
Mapping fields was something for which the service once required support but now does easily itself. GPS mapping is a favorite feature of crews, bringing everything into a single pane rather than requiring different applications.
“If there’s a 911 call, the dispatcher puts the address in, and the crews aren’t messing around in Google Maps trying to figure out where they’re going. They can just tap it and go, and all the other information is right there,” Gabryszek said. “On the IFT side, it’s shortened the process. We don’t have to call the crews with information; it gets sent right to them, and they can run with it.”
Things are functioning more smoothly at County Rescue with the change, and adding the nonemergency transport scheduling is expected to streamline things further.
“Overall it’s a super simple interface for call intake, assignment and tracking, and the simplicity of the user workflow is one of the key elements,” said Oldach. “It’s a modern user interface. It’s easy to see where to start and how to progress that call through its stages and get it assigned and completed by the crew. It’s just intuitive.”
For more information, visit ZOLL.
References
- “America’s 911 workforce is in crisis.” International Academies of Emergency Dispatch. 2023. www.911.gov/assets/IAED_NASNA_Staffing-Survey-Report-2023.pdf
- “Survey reveals urgent challenges in 9-1-1 centers amid staffing shortages & technological gaps.” Chris Nussman. National Emergency Number Association. 2024. www.nena.org/news/669810/Survey-Reveals-Urgent-Challenges-in-9-1-1-Centers-Amid-Staffing-Shortages—Technological-Gaps.htm
