OSWEGO -- Oswego County's emergency medical services coordinator says his department is facing challenges, as the need in the community grows.
Jim Jones says last year, the Oswego County E-911 Center handled 18,000 calls that required a dispatch. That's an increase of 14% from the previous year.
Jones says because the number of ambulances in the county is limited, sometimes when an emergency occurs, he has to call in mutual aid from another community. If the ambulance has to come from farther away, that can delay care for the patient. He also says he'd like to see more training sessions for people to become providers.
County officials are looking into the potential benefits of conducting a study to analyze some of these challenges. At this point, they have not made an official decision.
Jones thinks it may help prepare the EMS department for the future.
"We all have to do more with less," he says. "Our call numbers are going up significantly, and our staffing is staying the same. In some cases, with our ambulances, our staffing is going down, so we have to find ways to accommodate the need with the resources we have."
County officials say if they do decide to conduct a study, they will try to obtain grant funding to pay for it.
