The WHS 11 News Focus Team
investigation right here tonight.
Our focus Louisville EMS services.
Hello everybody,
and thanks for joining us at 6.
I'm Doug profit.
The city admits it is short staffed,
so it needs help from paramedics
and EMT's from the suburbs
of Jefferson County.
But just how much is that
taxing our resources?
Focus investigator John Charlton
is digging into the data,
which may seem to be alarming.
3 ambulances ready to roll every day.
24 hours a day.
That's what Jeffersontown has
to cover its community emergency
medical services with the supplies.
Linen, gloves, bag valve,
masks 2 answered the call, which last year.
And this is our medication cabinet.
One of them, we're about 7500 dispatch calls
epinephrine for use in cardiac arrest.
But not all EMS dispatch calls to
Jay Town kept resources in town.
We go everywhere.
Everywhere from okolona.
The PRP Fern Creek to Saint
Matthews High View to Anchorage,
Middletown.
That's mutual aid in the
suburban services district.
If your district needs additional
equipment, we will send that equipment.
Mutual aid also includes the urban
Services district, where sometimes
you'll find Jay Town called to downtown
and out of 7000 plus runs.
We already made about 600 of those runs
and dispatched into Louisville Metro
just about 8%, according to 2022 EMS data.
Jay Town provided the focus,
but for the six other suburban
departments from their data,
percentages are significantly higher.
Take Fern Creek, for example.
Now merged with Butal Fire and EMS,
at least 25% of their dispatch calls are
going to the Urban Services district.
That seems like a big number.
It does seem like a lot.
That was in 2020. Last year,
it was up to 29% of their 13,350 total calls.
In fact, according to each department's data,
EMS dispatch calls to the city have gone
up year to year for every one of them,
with the exception of.
Jay Town from 4% for Anchorage
Middletown in 2020 to 15% in 2022
from 4 to 14% for high View,
11 to 19% for Okolona,
23 to 37% for PRP and 33 to a
whopping 40% for Saint Matthews.
That doesn't just sound
like a lot, it is a lot,
right? And you know the reason
of that is because of their
location with the urban services,
Louisville Fire, 4th District,
Louisville Metro Emergency Services.
Director Jody Miman says the numbers are
especially higher for suburban departments
directly bordering the urban district.
It's all based on the closest ambulance,
again, mutual aid, which is
supposed to be a two way St.
we've been hearing grumblings
about the mutual aid is not
even anywhere near being 5050.
You'll be able to take a look at the
data and see that it's not as bad
as a lot of people say that it is,
according to the data Metro EMS
provided of the more than 81,000.
Total calls they got last year,
nearly 13,000 or about 16%,
dispatched their units to
the Suburban district.
While Saint Matthews was
called to the city 61157 times.
Metro went to Saint Matthews 677 times.
However, for perspective,
Metro EMS is a lot busier with five
and 1/2 times the call volume.
We're kind of resources. Do you have,
you know, we're down,
we're down about 35%.
With our staffing,
we strive for 20 trucks a day.
We've been averaging over the
last year anywhere between
14 and 18 trucks per day
between all 7 departments.
In the suburban services district,
there are 29 ambulances
going throughout the day.
Folks living in those areas pay an
extra property tax for those services.
How do you square it with
those folks to saying why are
our resources being used in
the urban services district?
It's a mutual aid.
Jay Town fire and EMS chief
Sean Driesbach speaks for the
entire suburban services district
as president of the Jefferson
County Fire Chiefs Association.
He acknowledges that they are
working things out with Metro.
There is a problem.
In his view, it's not so much an
issue of who's helping out who more.
If there's a problem, I would
say it's the misuse of 911
as it is emergency calls that
aren't really emergencies
and my ambulance is used in sometime as a
shopping service to take somebody from home.
To the hospital because they either have
a scheduled doctor's appointment or
they have a scheduled surgery that day.
Data shows that last year
with runs into the city,
1/3 of the time patients were not even
transported for Anchorage, Middletown,
it was more than half of the time.
Just 43% of calls resulted in transports.
We have a lot of people that
do abuse the system. You know,
just think about your emergency,
if it's a simple sickness
or you need to have a test,
you know that doesn't deserve.
Necessarily an emergency ambulance?
And Metro EMS doesn't want to
discourage people from calling 911,
but it actually has a cab fare
or cab fares in the budget for
folks who may just need a ride for
non-emergency medical attention.
Director Jody Meiman says this summer
he hopes to have nurses integrated
with dispatch to help triage patients
before an ambulance shows up.
John Charlton WHS 11 on your side.