By Leslie Collins
Northeast News
October 26, 2011

Medical emergency response times in the Northland still need improvement.

Kansas City Fire Department officials discussed the September ambulance service report during the Oct. 19 Public Safety and Emergency Services Committee meeting.

Earlier this year, the city adopted an ordinance outlining requirements for emergency response times. For each ambulance district, ambulances must respond within 9 minutes to life-threatening emergencies 85 percent of the time. In September, 385 life-threatening 9-11 calls came from the Northland and 83.1 percent were responded to within 9 minutes. While Ambulance Response District 1-North (ARD1-North) isn’t meeting the city’s standards, there have been steady improvements.

In July, 78.7 percent of life threatening emergencies were responded to within 9 minutes in ARD1-North and in August, that number increased to 80.4 percent.

For life threatening emergencies in ARD2-Central in September, 95.9 percent were responded to within 9 minutes. In ARD3-East, that figure was 86.4 percent and 85 percent in ARD4-South.

City-wide, the fire department is noting the best response times since it took over the ambulance service, said Deputy Chief Sal Monteleone of the Kansas City Fire Department Technical Services Bureau.

“I don’t think it’s a fluke. It’s a good number,” he said of city-wide response times.

“We’re glad to see this improvement, particularly in the Northland,” Committee member John Sharp said.

Emergency call processing times in September exceeded city requirements. Kansas City stipulates that 90 percent of all medical emergency calls be processed (notify emergency personnel) within one minute. During September, 97.4 percent of calls met that requirement. “Turnout times” also exceeded requirements with ambulances and fire trucks leaving their stations within one minute of the initial call 95.9 percent of the time.

One reason for the improvements stemmed from the elimination of pagers, Monteleone said. Pagers are not always reliable and some buildings can block signal transmissions to pagers, he said. Now, all emergency personnel are required to have radio contact at all times, he said.

Asked for his opinion on the report, Committee member Scott Taylor said, “It’s a continuing effort. The fire department is attacking response times in a very systematic manner.”

In three out of four geographical areas, the fire department is hitting its target times, he said. The fire department must continue to maintain its response times city-wide and also improve on ones in the Northland, he said.