By EMS1 Staff
DENVER — More traffic and longer commutes are creating a challenge for Denver Health Medical Center paramedics trying to get patients to emergency care as quickly as possible.
“We’re talking minutes and seconds that are important here,” Lt. Jake McCaig with the Denver Health Paramedic Division told KDVR.com.
According to the local news station there were over 112,406 paramedic response calls in 2016 requiring an ambulance. Last year, that number jumped to 117,630.
Dispatcher Tojia Hoskins told KDVR that she and her colleagues rely on specialized system that helps optimize a limited number of ambulances across a large call area.
Denver Health paramedics are required to respond in under 9 minutes, 90 percent of the time.
Each medic pass training that tests their sensibility and geography since GPS devices are not installed in Denver Health ambulances.