CARROLL COUNTY, Tenn. — At last week’s county commission meeting, Sheriff Eric Sawyers said there have been more than 4,500 EMS calls in Carroll County so far this year, and no ambulance was available for 200 of them.
“That’s 200 too many,” he said.
Carroll County Observer requested CAD reports for all calls involving EMS from the two weeks before the Oct. 2 incident that sparked the backlash against Priority Ambulance. These are some of the findings.
Between Sept. 19 and Oct. 3, the county’s 911 center logged EMS on 166 calls. Three ambulance units handled nearly all of them, and a fourth unit appeared on six calls.
On seven of those calls, dispatchers recorded that no ambulance was available.
Mutual aid was requested from another county or service on six of the seven, and one of those requests was answered, when Henry County EMS responded to the Oct. 2 wreck in McKenzie. On five of the seven calls, no Carroll County ambulance reached the patient. In those cases a first responder handled the call, a neighboring county responded, or the patient was taken by police car or private vehicle.
Of the calls with an ambulance arrival time recorded, the median time from the 911 call to an ambulance arriving on scene was 16 minutes, and the average was 18 minutes. An ambulance arrived within 10 minutes on 33 of those calls, about a quarter. It took longer than 20 minutes on 48 calls and longer than 30 minutes on 12. The longest wait was 70 minutes.
The remaining 32 calls had no arrival time logged, most often because the ambulance was canceled or its arrival was not recorded. All times are based on dispatcher entries in the county’s CAD system, not on records kept by the ambulance service.