NAMPA, Idaho — Nampa first responders are speeding up their response times thanks to efficiencies made in February.
Dispatchers are now sending crews to emergency calls by starting with what they call the “chief complaint” and a professional version of PulsePoint.
“That PulsePoint notification actually goes out often before the dispatcher gets on the radio or the tones are out to the station,” said Chris King, deputy fire chief of operations. “So those two things in total have averaged about 90 seconds in uptick or improvements in the response of our responders out to the community.”
Not every call is a matter of life and death, but those 90 seconds could truly be life-saving.
“Because we know the brain can only survive four to six minutes without oxygen. So the body’s obviously compensating for that period of time, but the longer someone goes without oxygen, then their outcome could be worse,” said Ann Lempesis, fire captain of Station 1. “So, I mean, a minute, 60 seconds, 90 seconds, two minutes actually, yes, it’s life or death in certain instances.”
Phones by their side and notifications enabled, first responders can start gearing up to respond before they’re formally assigned to a call.
“If we’re like at the dinner table and someone’s phone will ding, it’s like, ‘Oh, someone’s getting a call. Oh, that’s us.’ And they have not dispatched anyone yet,” Lempesis said.
With a crew already on the way, dispatchers can continue gathering information from the caller. Those updates are pushed to their PulsePoint and apparatus computers.
“It’ll give me information that the dispatcher has inputted into the system from the information they got from the caller,” Lempesis said. “So I’m going to scroll down and see what type of call it is.”
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