KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — American Medical Response, Knox County's ambulance provider, said it is working to address concerns about the time it takes to respond to calls and deliver patients to hospitals.
Jerry Harnish, the director of AMR, said emergency rooms lack the capacity to take every patient that comes in immediately. Harnish said if ambulance crews get to 30-minute offload times, they'd be able to put four to five ambulances back on duty at all times. He said he doesn't know entirely what steps to take to get there.
"The staff will help a lot. I think another thing that will be measured is the increase in number of patients that don't have to be taken to the emergency department," Harnish said.
Harnish said if AMR diverts non-emergency calls away from ambulance crews and towards other resources, more ambulances would be freed up to respond to higher-priority calls. Priority 1 calls are those that can be life-threatening, like a stroke or heart attack. Priority 2 calls might be urgent, like a fall. Priority 3 calls are not medical emergencies.
Harnish said those calls are common in the "Mission District" of Knoxville, located near the Broadway Viaduct.
"The issue there is that a lot of the folks that live in that area are unhoused and they don't have access to primary health care," Harnish said. "If there was some way to have a clinic in the Mission District, a lot of these issues could be handled there and would prevent people having to call 911 to get basic care."
Knox Area Rescue Ministries said it is working to reduce those calls. The nonprofit opened a care center around four years ago which helps provide services. Andrew Church, KARM's vice president of programs, said the nonprofit also received a grant allowing it to create a crisis intervention program.
"Many folks out of that facility are able to get medications able to triage and assess what's really going on to help curb those calls," Church said.
AMR hopes extra staff and diverting non-emergency calls will help reduce offload times. The ambulance provider has been fined several times for not responding to calls fast enough. If it takes longer than 10 minutes for a paramedic to arrive, the Knox County Health Department fines AMR.