Newton County Supervisors are working to amend their contract with LifeCare EMS, which provides ambulance service to the county, after the medical provider announced it would be upgrading its equipment to allow for in-house dispatching.
In a regularly scheduled meeting Monday, the Board of Supervisors heard from E911 Director Bryan Taylor, who explained what LifeCare was wanting to do.
“What they’re doing, I think they’re upgrading their communication center in Carthage,” He said. “They’d like to start dispatching.”
Currently, Taylor said, Newton County 911 Center is handling the calls for the three LifeCare ambulances stationed throughout the county. However, there have been delays in getting paramedics on the road within the 2-minute time limit and issues with dispatchers unknowingly sending a call to one ambulance when another ambulance was much closer to the call.
With its upgraded systems, Taylor said the Carthage-based call center would have real-time GPS locations on the ambulances and a push-button response signal inside the truck, which would cut down on paramedics fudging their response time numbers.
“They’d have to physically be in the ambulance to push it,” he said.
The system wouldn’t be perfect, Taylor said, but it would be an improvement. The only big issue is that the GPS systems would use cellular data to update ambulance locations. In some areas of the county, he said, cell signals aren’t strong enough to share accurate information.
“If you go towards Duffee, it’ll stop when you get out around Little Rock,” he said. “It might show you there for 45 minutes, then pick back up when they get toward Meridian.”
Supervisor Joe Alexander, who met separately with LifeCare administrators, said his major concern was the loss of dispatching ability.
“I told them we’re not going to give up our dispatching because those are our people too,” he said.
Taylor agreed, adding he had talked with LifeCare’s communications director about that. He said LifeCare would need to continually update Newton County dispatchers about where ambulances were and where they were going.
“It’s what they do now,” he said.
The GPS system would also allow Newton County 911 Center and even the supervisors themselves to check the ambulance locations themselves, Taylor added. The county would not be in the dark.
“It sounds like, if we do go this route, there’s going to be enough data to smooth all the issues out,” Board President Charles Godwin said.
While the board agreed to let LifeCare handle dispatching, Board Attorney Jason Mangum said they would need to amend the county’s contract with LifeCare before it could be official. He said he would get in touch with LifeCare’s regional administrator, Jerry Johnston, to figure out the language to add to the contract. With no unforeseen issues, Mangum said he would have a draft for the board to review at their next meeting.
If approved by both the Board of Supervisors and LifeCare, the dispatching change would go into effect in late May or early June.
