LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The City of Louisville wants to ease the load on the city’s Emergency Management Services System.
Mayor Craig Greenberg’s budget proposal calls for the creation of a new 911 triage program.
According to Deputy Director of Louisville EMS, Kelly Jones, over the past two years his department has received almost 300,000 calls.
“If just 5% of those calls ended up being something that we could defer, that’s by my math, about 40 calls a day. That’s 5 in an 8-hour day. That’s a lot of calls and that’s a lot of strain coming off the system. So we’re just trying to find a way to be more effective, be more efficient and focus on emergency medicine,” Jones said.
The city is considering creating a 911 triage program or center. The Mayor’s budget proposal includes a plan that would put medical professionals inside the 911 call center to handle medical emergency calls. Jones said there are still discussions happening about who would staff a center and what the salary and job responsibilities would be.
“A call will come into the center. That person whose in triage will listen to the call, understand the facts, and help the caller decide yes we need to send an ambulance, if it’s an emergency send one now. Or the person might say ‘you know, that is a legitimate medical need but it doesn’t require an emergency ambulance.’ We’re probably going to have fly cars in the field who can help evaluate some of these. It may be a car that’s kind of roaming around the city and go to that address to double-check and make sure,” Jones said.
Other cities including Washington, D.C., Austin, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida have similar programs
Jones explained “We’ve talked with those folks there and they like it. What we end up with may mirror some of those cities, it may be our own hybrid of things”
The budget proposal includes $600,000 to launch the program. But, it still needs approval from Metro Council.
“I thank the Mayor for giving us the opportunity to work on it and I hope it makes it in the final budget cut with our Metro Council. It’s something we’re excited about. I think we can make it work,” Jones said.
Jones added he thinks patient care will improve, by getting people to the right place, at the right time, with the right personnel.
Jones said he thinks this will be successful. He also told us the $600,000 would go to things like salaries for medical professionals and any initial equipment they might need.
