Automated Dispatch Nashville, TN Fire/EMS

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GoldcrossEMTbasic

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I have an Scanner App on my Iphone, Recently I was listening to Nashville's EMS channel and the call came out and the address information and chief of complaint sounded like a computer or automated voice. and the information was repeated x3 station number, truck/rig number and type of of call. If anybody works in the Nashville EMS system could you verify that is true? or if anybody else that works with an agency that uses this type of system? In my opinion, "I think that a real person should be a the dispatcher giving out the pertinent info to the assigned agency?" But if it saves the city thousands of dollars, instead of paying someone, so be it!" :rofl:
 
That's not unusual especially in busy systems.

Why do you need a person to spit out a unit number, priority, address and chief complaint? The only thing I listen to in our dispatches is the address. Well my unit number too but that's kinda a given. Spend any amount of time in the field and you'll learn dispatch is often way off when it comes to the chief complaint. "I'm having indigestion again, I missed my one praxis the last week cause I ran out." "Do you have any chest pain?" "Yea it burns from my stomach through my chest to my mouth." "Medic 338 respond priority 1 for chest pain, 123 ABC road."
 
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I think its all about efficiency, which is what emergency services strive for among other things, no?

Dispatcher receives the call and has software up with 3 categories. While listening to the address, selects station closest to the call. C/C received, select it from a drop down menu, or type in a text box. Priority set in the next category. Hit fancy button that says "Let the Tones Drop". Text-to-speech system activates at the same time as the dispatcher picks up another calls, saving seconds that tend to add up.

I wouldn't always blame dispatch for having the call wrong, especially if its EMS Dispatch. They bear the yelling and crying and shaky voices and laymen's terms, and do what they can to translate it. Dispatch info on a call is a privilege, and is most certainly not "needed". It's just nice to be en route while running differentials in your head.
 
One of our dispatchers sounds like a robot but he's not, I've met him.
 
Locution Systems is the one of the more popular automated dispatch system. It saves time, provides consistent easy to understand directions and allows for simultaneous dispatches in a busy system.
 
GoldcrossEMTbasic said:
I have an Scanner App on my Iphone, Recently I was listening to Nashville's EMS channel and the call came out and the address information and chief of complaint sounded like a computer or automated voice. and the information was repeated x3 station number, truck/rig number and type of of call. If anybody works in the Nashville EMS system could you verify that is true? or if anybody else that works with an agency that uses this type of system? In my opinion, "I think that a real person should be a the dispatcher giving out the pertinent info to the assigned agency?" But if it saves the city thousands of dollars, instead of paying someone, so be it!" :rofl:
Click to expand...

Digital dispatch allows very rapid dispatching in large areas. Let's compare the time it takes in my county to dispatch a structure fire for my department's first due:

1. Set tones off for stations 5, 6, 19, and 33, ES admin, and the closest medic unit.
2. "Station 5, 6, 19, 33, Medic 22, ES Admin, respond 1004 Village Road reference structure fire, smoke showing. Time out 18:00."

No lie, that probably takes 45 seconds. It is then repeated over the dispatch channel after the primary station checks enroute.

We're a lil country area, but even we've gone away from checking enroute, on scene, transporting, etc over the radio and using our mobile data terminal instead. Why?

Radio traffic and dispatcher attention.

So what about digital dispatch?

1. Once enough information makes it into the CAD system...automagically dispatching units.
2. Transmission via public or private Internets to simultaneously alert each station.

How long does this take? 30 seconds.

Wait? So why is 15 seconds better? Parallelism, concurrency, and a bunch of other computer science terms :)

Dispatchers can pay attention to radio traffic or spend time coaching telephone CPR. Individual units don't have to hear the verbal diarrhea that is additional dispatching.

Charlotte Fire uses this, and I got to see it while running a medical clinic during the DNC. Was pretty cool and I wish we had it in our area.
 
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Exactly. In Seattle, the radio dispatch is usually 30 to 45 seconds behind the in-house alerting.
 
I work for a private service but our County does not use digital dispatching. A structure fire would go out as such, for lets say Engine 30's first due: D= Dispatcher

D: Engine 30, Rescue 30, Engine 2, Engine 8, Rescue 8, Truck 1, Air 22, Car 101 respond to 123 ABC street for residential structure fire, response on Fire Ground 2. Company 30 will be first due.

Engine and Rescue 30 would mark en route.

D: Engine 30, Rescue 30, Engine 2, Engine 8, Rescue 8, Truck 1, Air 22, Car 101 respond to 123 ABC street for residential structure fire, response on Fire Ground 2. Caller reports xyz.

The dispatcher would repeat the call on the primary county channel but all units excluding Company 30 going en route will be on the Fire Ground channel that is assigned for that call by the dispatcher. Once the first due company or Engine(some Engine's are Engine only stations) goes en route on the primary channel they switch to the assigned Fire Ground.

Commercial response are the same except they add another engine, another truck and a second car which are Battalion Chiefs(theirs 3 per shift)
 
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Automated dispatch is very useful for us in the comm center. Unfortunately, we don't have it here, but I wish we did.

I really enjoy actual dispatching, but it often gets in the way of higher priority issues, ie. ringing emergency phone lines. Even in our little county we will receive 5-35 phone calls plus radio traffic from someone in the area the second a major MVC occurs... It's hard to dispatch a call in a timely manner, and answer that many lines with only 3-4 people. It would be great if I could just press a button and know everythings automated.
 
Don't forget to add time to the dispatcher to breathe while dispatching. Bigger the incident the more breaths it takes to do dispatch longer it takes.

I have been dispatched on a couple of plane emergencies; where you may have 15-30 + pieces of apparatus dispatched. One of them took almost 3 minutes to dispatch each time *2 (or 3 repeats).

Computer can do it faster, (no breathing ) and it is easier to understand, good text to speech can actually have basic accents built in. But you don't have the dispatcher with the crazy accent that no one can understand, or the one with the cold that day.
 
And automated dispatch systems are likely NOT using old quik-call tone sets to alert each station. Those tones take a while, too. For a full structure fire response, there may be a good 60 seconds of nothing but "beeeee booooooop" on the radio as each department is alerted.
 
DEmedic said:
And automated dispatch systems are likely NOT using old quik-call tone sets to alert each station. Those tones take a while, too. For a full structure fire response, there may be a good 60 seconds of nothing but "beeeee booooooop" on the radio as each department is alerted.
Click to expand...

I'll see your 60 seconds and raise you a fire I had last year... It took almost 5 minutes for all the tones drop... Just in time to start the next alert. Anything greater than a base second alarm here gets real screwy.
 
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