Software change renders ambulance reports inaccurate
- Charlene Sims, Journal staff
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
By Charlene Sims, Journal staff
MOUND CITY – During the reports on Monday, June 22, from the emergency services in Linn County, American Medical Response (AMR) operations manager Dawn Brooks informed the commissioners that some of the ambulance call statistics she has been reporting to the commission were not correct because of a change in software.
“I did want to point out, if you did notice, the calls and responses are less this time than they they were previously,” Brooks said. “During our CAD changeover in February, the reporting was counting every response as a call instead of a response, so it was doubling it. So now I think we’ve got that fixed.
“So you’ll notice that the calls are actual calls. That’s the intent, not how many ambulances responded or supervisors or anybody else. So they might have three responses to one call. We don’t need to know that, we need to know how many calls. I think that’s fixed.
“The other thing in the audit that I found, Linn Valley’s not reporting and that’s falling under La Cygne. So I’m trying to get that sorted so that we can see the difference. They’re being recorded, they’re just falling under La Cygne. So you might see that change hopefully by next week.”
Commissioner Alison Hamilton replied, “Perfect. Thank you.”
In an email with her current report, she explained that this report had been partially updated and expected it to be fully corrected by next week. She said the transports are accurate, however the distinction between responses and calls without transports needed to be finalized.
Brooks’ report from June 1 through June 21 showed there had been a total of 100 calls resulting in 54 transports. The average response time is 12 minutes 45 seconds. The calls by city were:
• Blue Mound, 6 calls, 4 transports
• Centerville, 2 calls, 2 transports
• Fulton, 2 calls, 0 transports
• Greeley, 0 calls, 0 transports
• La Cygne, 37 calls, 19 transports
• Fontana, 1 call, 1 transport
• Lane, 0 calls, 0 transports
• Linn Valley, 0 calls, 0 transports
• Mapleton, 0 calls, 0 transports
• Rich Hill, 0 calls, 0 transports
• Mound City, 19 calls, 8 transports
• Parker, 5 calls, 3 transports
• Pleasanton 22 calls, 14 transports
• Prescott, 7 calls, 3 transports
Because of the difficulty with the system, there was no information on the number of calls for each commission districts. However, response numbers and times for this period were:
District 1 – 20 transports, 10 minutes 9 seconds average response time
District 2 – 19 transports, 8 minutes average response time
District 3 – 15 transports, 17 minutes 49 seconds average response time
Interim Fire Chief Brian Shroyer gave the weekly fire report. There were three emergency medical services (EMS) assists, one motor vehicle accident, one power line down, one carbon monoxide check, one smoke investigation and one structure fire for a total of eight calls. Shroyer told the commissioners that he did have a couple of applications for firefighters out and he hoped he would be able to bring them to the commissioners next week.
Interim Emergency Management Coordinator Linda Simons said that she was still working on emergency plans and is going to meet with some of the other departments on things they are working on together.
Simons reported, “We’re still watching the weather. Hopefully we’re going to be done with severe weather quickly. What we are working on is if we do have severe weather, if we do have damage the we are able to handle that.”
Hamilton made a motion to go into executive session for 10 minutes for information security with the two commissioners, Simons, county counselor Jacklyn Paletta and also Public Works Administrator Jesse Walton. After the session, Hamilton reported that there was no action.
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