Florida EMS Chief: County Needs More Ambulances

April 29—Ambulances are rolling at record rates in Lake County, and that has Lake's emergency medical service in critical condition.

"It's going crazy," said Jerry Smith, director of the non-profit Lake EMS.

Smith, who was appointed to lead the ambulance service in September 2012 after former chief Jim Judge resigned, alerted county commissioners and the agency's governing board on April 16 that no ambulances were available to respond to 911 calls during a five-minute period because of "excessive call volume."

It was the fourth time since October the service had no ambulances to dispatch for at least a five-minute interval. No emergency went unanswered, Smith said, but the possibility of a shortage is troubling for a county with more than 300,000 residents.

Commission Chairman Jimmy Conner described the issue as "potentially...very dangerous territory."

Smith will ask the EMS governing board at a meeting Thursday to buy two new fully-equipped ambulances and hire crews to staff them.

He estimated the price tag for the ambulances at about $450,000 while new crews would add $300,000 to the service's annual operating costs.

Lake EMS is funded partly by user fees billed to patients and partly by revenue from a county-wide, property-tax assessment.

Conner told fellow commissioners last week: "I'd rather get yelled at and demonized for raising taxes or fees than to have on my conscience that we weren't meeting the public-safety needs of our community.

"I think we've all tried to cut back, but I don't want someone dying because we don't have an ambulance to go get them."

The rise in emergency-medical calls has been sudden and, so far, unexplainable, Smith said.

Never before had Lake EMS been summoned for help more in a month than it was in March, and never had it been called upon to carry as many sick or injured patients to emergency rooms as often as in March. Lake EMS call logs show its paramedics answered 4,475 calls that month and rushed 3,342 patients to hospitals.

That's nearly a 12 percent jump in calls and a 16 percent leap in transports over March 2014.

"We get these bursts," Smith said. "I'm hoping this is just an anomaly."

In fiscal year 2013, the service answered 43,332 calls and took 31,139 people to the hospital. The next year, calls and transports both increased about five percent to 45,472 calls and 32,862 hospital runs.

If the current pace continues, the service will shatter records for calls by 9 percent and transports by 10 percent.

The service's ambulances have been in such demand recently that 45 times since October three or fewer ambulances were available to make an emergency run, a level that Smith labeled as "critical." He prefers the flexibility of five or more ambulances. In the previous 12 months, service demand for Lake EMS was at Smith's "critical" level 44 times.

Lake EMS runs 19 ambulances, sited at strategic locations countywide. Thirteen of the ambulances work 24 hours a day while six run 13 hours a day, providing service from 11:30 a.m. until 8 p.m., the county's peak call period. Each truck is staffed with a paramedic and emergency medical technician.

"If I had the money for five [more] ambulances right now, I could keep them busy running," he said. "Right now, we need two more."

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