Changes to response times are working, MEDIC says

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MEDIC said it has reduced red lights and sirens response to 23% of its total responses.

“And we see that life-threatening illness and injury is still about 5% of what we see. So, there’s still a big gap there between how we respond and what patients’ conditions are upon our arrival,” a MEDIC official said during its presentation.

MEDIC says that led to a 78% reduction in traffic accidents involving MEDIC when lights and sirens were on.

MEDIC also says it reduced the number of calls fire departments had to respond to by 17%.

The biggest change to the system is how MEDIC lengthened the time it will take to respond to certain types of calls without impacting the patients who were most in need, getting to those most emergency calls in less than 11 minutes, and the lowest priority calls in up to an hour and a half.

“And we see that we predicted that 19% of our call volume would be in that first priority,” the MEDIC official said. “And in actuality, we’re at about 22%. So we actually have a few more patients in our highest priority response category.”

Channel 9 asked MEDIC’s director whether the new system is affecting their on-time performance. He said it didn’t.

They’re still at 96%, which is above the target of 90%.

MEDIC says they still need to continue educating the public on when to call 911 and how long it will take for them to get there.

Another challenge for MEDIC is its staff shortage.

They said the change in EMTs got much better after an in-house training program over the past year.

However, they are still 25% short of the paramedics they need.

(WATCH BELOW: MEDIC adjusts its response times to 911 calls based on their urgency)