Riley County EMS provided information about response times and calls for service for the northern part of the county Monday.
EMS Director David Adams spoke about this topic as part of the new building process for EMS. Data points shared Monday included call volume, response times and criticality of calls in the area from January 2020 to the present.
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Criticality of calls is determined to be if responders were using lights and sirens on the way to the call and hospital.
EMS has responded emergent over 40% of the time in northern Riley County and transported emergent back to the hospital 3.45% of the time since January 2020.
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Commissioner Greg McKinley seemed to be skeptical of the average dispatch time. Residents of northern Riley County have been asking for a closer EMS station to reduce response times for quite a while.
One northern county resident spoke during public comment about a petition sent to the county clerk’s office about this topic back in October. Kevin Bellamy says there were over 200 signatures for the petition.
Data presented also include cost estimates for building a new ambulance station. Adams says the estimate is based on current prices and previous purchases from this year.
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Adams says he doesn’t believe they will be getting a new Step One employee. This is due to multiple factors such as surrounding counties offering signing bonuses, and the effects from COVID causing a graduate shortage.
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The total estimated cost for a new station is around $910,000.
