Huron County council has approved the recommendation from its Chief of Emergency Services to maintain their current response time standard for the rest of 2022 and 2023.
Emergency Services Chief Jeff Horseman says they've been using and meeting that response time standard for the last several years. But, he says they have had some additional call volume increases and off load delays at facilities that are tying up their crews, and so, they added additional resources to their deployment plan in July of 2022.
Horseman says he's confident they will be able to continue to meet that response time, but it will depend on how much of an increase there is in call volumes. Horseman says it was predicted call volumes would increase, based on historical data projections with age demographics and other demographics with respect to increasing population, so they expected that they would have to increase their staffing pattern to maintain their response time. Horseman says he believes that, in the future, staffing will have to be increased, but he says that will be determined as they monitor the increase in call volume year over year.
Horseman added, as the number of people that fit into the sixty to eighty year old group grows, so do the resources that are required to look after them and he says that's where the community para-medicine would come into play as well. He says if they can provide care for those people longer in their home, rather than in the hospital, that will decrease their call volume, which will help them in meeting their response time target.