The Safety and Licensing Committee met 05/08/2024. One of the information items they received was a 6-month review of the shared service agreement between Gold Cross ambulance service and the City of Appleton Fire Department.
Back in August of 2023, the Safety and Licensing Committee voted to enter into an agreement with Gold Cross Ambulance Service formalizing the relationship that already existed between Gold Cross and the Appleton Fire Department. The one change that the committee made was to require a report every six-months on various metrics associated with the agreement.
The first of those reports was given at the 05/08/2024 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting.
I’ve prepared a transcript of the discussion for download:
Nick Romenesko of Gold Cross went through the report with the committee. The report was only 2 pages long and the information provided in it was very straightforward so there is no need to duplicate most of that here.
Their response times were good, coming in at an average of 8 minutes 30 seconds for emergency calls, which was 29 seconds less than the benchmark of 8 minutes 59 seconds. There was no benchmark for non-emergency response time, but that came in on average at 11 minutes 39 seconds. For emergencies, they were under that 8 minute 59 second respond time for 93.8% of calls and for non-emergency calls they came in under that on 72.37% of calls.
Mr. Romenesko noted that future iterations of the report would break that section out into more detail.
Mr. Romenesko highlighted that they now had 2-person coverage in their dispatch center 24/7 to help make sure they don’t miss any communication. In February, they also added a 24/7 Operations Manager which consisted of someone in a command vehicle who was available to respond to large-scale incidents.
There was some discussion about their STEMI response. STEMI stands for ST Elevated Myocardial Infarction which is a heart attack that can be seen on the EKG monitor as opposed to the type of heart attacks that cannot be seen by EKG monitors. For the STEMI heart attacks, they activate an entire team in the hospital to provide specialized care right away as opposed to merely taking the patient to the ER.
The EKG time was on average 10 minutes 43 seconds as compared to a goal of under 5 minutes. They talked a little about why that number was so high. There was nuance in the assessment process in which they talked to patients and tried to figure out what they needed to do. The amount of time it took to perform an EKG increased when the patient didn’t show clear indications of chest pain or shortness of breath. Given the small sample size of only 9 patients, long times for couple patients could really affect the overall average.
Additionally, Gold Cross had cardiac monitors, but the Appleton Fire Department did not. They continued to look at ways to improve their EKG times, one of which was to purchase cardiac cables for the Fire Department so that Fire Department personnel could at least connect the cables to a patient ahead of time and then when Gold Cross arrived they would merely have to plug those cables into their machines.
Fire Chief Hansen indicated that the Fire Department would get cardiac monitors on their trucks eventually which would help speed things up.
Overall, Chief Hansen expressed satisfaction with Gold Cross’s service. He did note that part of the agreement with Gold Cross required Gold Cross to work on the Fire Department’s 800-megahertz radio channel. They were moving in the right direction on that. “It’s not perfect, but tell me when communication is.”
Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) asked if there was any data on response times to overdoses. Mr. Romenesko said that they did track that, but those numbers had not been listed in the agreement as a metric to be reported, so it had not been included in the report, but he would be happy to include those numbers in future reports.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1162736&GUID=EEAA1200-1026-4342-A325-AADF0F6D25C3
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