By Kevin Barlow
The Pantagraph
CLINTON, Ill. — Dr. John Warner Hospital is ready and willing to work with any of the three ambulance services approved by the DeWitt County Board, but CEO Earl Sheehy is disappointed the hospital’s current service has been criticized for a delayed response.
The County Board is expected Thursday to vote on a recommendation to hire a Schiller Park firm once the current hospital-run service is disbanded Dec. 1.
Last Wednesday, a worker at Vespasian Warner Public Library suffered tightness in his chest and chest pain. The county’s dispatch center, CENCOM, was about to page the Beason Fire Department instead of the Clinton Ambulance Service, but the dispatcher caught the mistake before the page was sent.
“It was a keystroke issue,” said Clinton Police Chief Mike Reidy, chairman of the CENCOM board. “It was corrected right away.”
Less than 30 seconds later, Clinton’s ambulance service and fire department were paged to the library, located a half-mile and two minutes away, according to MapQuest.
The CENCOM detail call sheet indicates the ambulance was dispatched at 12:30:40, was en route at 12:31:19, and arrived at 12:35:59.
Reidy said the proper location and address were provided. “It shouldn’t take that long to get there,” Reidy said. “It was the inability of the ambulance drivers to find the location.”
DeWitt County Sheriff Jered Shofner agreed.
“I understand they drove through the Sheriff’s Department parking lot looking for the location,” he said. “The library is easy to locate.”
The patient was transported to the hospital and received care.
CENCOM manager Tony Harris agreed Beason was mistakenly called but that was not the reason for the majority of the delay.
The issue was raised the same night during a County Board advisory committee meeting on picking an ambulance service. The committee eventually voted to go with Paramedic Services of Illinois of Schiller Park to replace the current service, disbanded by the hospital board effective Dec. 1.
Several current employees organized a non-profit group to provide ambulance service.
“There was a lot of misinformation and people said that our employees were not trustworthy,” Sheehy said. “This is not true. It’s hard enough to keep a staff together until December because there is no guarantee for jobs for them after that point. But to just blast our employees is unfair.”
Copyright 2012 The Pantagraph