KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City audit has found that ambulance response times have significantly worsened after a change in protocol required dispatchers to ask more questions.
Kansas City ambulances are now responding with a median time that’s one minute slower than it was in December, when the Municipal Ambulance Services Trust was running the service, according to the Kansas City Star.
Councilman John Sharp expressed alarm at the findings and urged the fire department to reevaluate how dispatchers should assess callers, even though he supported the change in protocol.
“It’s taking too long,” Sharp said. “I didn’t think it would add this much time.”
Response times have been under scrutiny since the city’s fire department took over the service from MAST in April 2010.
However, the audit also found that calls were still being met within nine minutes 74-79 percent of the time. When MAST was in control, calls were met in the same time frame 82-89 percent of the time.
The Kansas City Star reported that Interim Fire Chief Paul Berardi still supports the change in protocol, saying it “was not a whimsical decision” and would allow for dispatchers to better understand how to respond to an emergency.
Sharp said that although the extra dispatcher questions have reduced the number of ambulances sent out, the city will reconsider the policy in light of the audit’s findings.