Augusta leaders discuss EMS issues and ambulance response times
AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - Waiting is the hardest part and eventually, the wait becomes unbearable. In some cases, unsurvivable.
“She called me and I knew within her voice, she was in distress,” said Mary Bogan.
Earlier this week, Bogan got a call from her 80-year-old sister Bernice.
“She said, ‘Can you please just call 911?’ I said yes,” she said.
Mary called at least five times they never showed up. After an hour she had a loved one take her sister to the hospital.
“But it’s those times when things do go wrong that you really want to kind of take that incident, take a look at it, you know, understand what happened,” said Augusta Commission member Brandon Garrett, District 8.
On Thursday, the EMS subcommittee received proof of a problem. The data from Augusta Fire shows an eight-minute increase from 2020 to 2021 for the time it takes a patient to get to the hospital. But Augusta Fire doesn’t transport to hospitals after they stabilize a patient they must wait for Gold Cross to transfer.
The interim fire chief says that’s where the trouble begins.
“It’s an increase in those times to wait for them (Gold Cross) to arrive on the scene,” said Shaw Williams Jr. Augusta Fire/EMA interim fire chief.
But what causes crews not to arrive like for Mary’s sister?
“And every time I called ‘they’re on the way.’ They have never not shown up or not been on time,” said Bogan.
Gold Cross says crews are often tied up at the hospital, waiting to get patients in a room leaving fewer ambulances available for emergencies. Commissioner Brandon Garrett says he wants to see hospitals and Gold Cross address the concerns.
“We’re trying to make sure that they provided the best care, the best service that’s possible,” he said.
Mary says her sister Bernice is still in the hospital and she never got clarification on what took so long for help to arrive. We looked through all calls Augusta Fire responded to in 2021 and the longest time from arrival to when a patient was checked into the hospital was 251 minutes.
Right now commissioners do not have any data on the times Gold Cross arrives at an emergency or clears a patient at the hospital. Williams says just recently, he ordered Augusta Fire crews to start tracking the amount of time they wait for Gold Cross to arrive to transport patients.
Augusta Fire Dept. CAD Basic Incident Rpt. by WRDW Analytics on Scribd
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