KENT COUNTY, Mich. — Local police dispatchers have changed their procedures in order to make the emergency process smoother for Emergency Medical Service responders due to this years significant rise in calls about health concerns due to the pandemic.
The Kent County Sheriffs department call center manager, Brett Hulliberger, said from July 2019-July 2020 about 25% of all service calls were medical, which is pretty standard. But the majority of medical calls have been directly COVID related meaning they've seen a decrease in other medical emergencies.
Hulliberger said, "Every executive or health order, we get a lot of calls and questions about it, but not all questions lead to a dispatch."
Back in March before the surge of cases hit West Michigan, the emergency response call teams, and EMS responders met to try and get ahead of the chaos.
Nick Skinner, Life EMS Ambulance Supervisor told us how the crews get notified of COVID-19 patients through their dispatch teams new list of questions.
"So if any one has any COVID systems we get an alert that says airborne precautions so they know what to use, an N-95 mask, eye protection and gowns for that call," Skinner said.
Hulliberger, the counties call center manager, told us that list of questions are standardized ever so often, even up to last week to make the call process easier.
"We have the five or six standard questions that we hone in on, we used to ask if you traveled out of the country, now we ask if you traveled out of the state, and we have to have the same language across the whole county, so that we are all on the same platform,"Hulliberger.
Both Hulliberger and Skinner noted that initially there was a drop in emergency call centers citing the stay at home orders. Yet even as spikes occur throughout the pandemic, the lines have been steady.
Skinner said, "Busy times did happen but it was nothing we couldn't handle, we were making all of our call times. For priority ones we like to be there in less than eight minutes and we have more time for non- emergencies. We have never been turned away from a hospital and no hospital has told us that we had a patient load that they couldn't accept."
Skinner says PPE was the largest change for hands on responders.
"As about a week ago we changed protocols again, essentially the fire departments and the medical first responders are approaching scenes pretty much in full precautionary mode at this point," Hulliberger told us.
Both first responder say they noticed a drop in medical calls related to non-covid issues. Hulliberger believes since more people are at home, less emergencies are happening, but says it could also just be fear of going to the hospitals.
But Skinner said that if any one is afraid of getting into ambulances or even the hospital, EMS and other health professionals are doing all that they can to keep medical facilities safe.
Skinner left us with, "Things have been steady and are being handled appropriately."
►Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this. Download the 13 ON YOUR SIDE app now.
Have a news tip? Email news@13onyourside.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.