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as a dispatcher and EMT for a comercial ALS company in dutchess I know that we have been told that if you lie about location or go over a set speed you get time off. all of our ambulances have GPS that our dispatch can see and there is talk that county wants ALL vehicles they dispatch ie police, fire and EMS to be GPS tracked but there are issues with this. Say NDP transports some one to beacon and now there is a priority 1 call in fishkill and NDP is the closest unit on GPS but county doesn't know they have a PT in the bus and dispatches them since they are the closest unit. for this to work then all the EMS for 911 would need to be a county contract and the contracted buses would need to call out of service for transports since private transports are bound to hapen since they pay for the EMS agancy to operate.

Some of the issues are that the free towns are not paying so they do not have a dedicated bus they are getting units from comercial agencys as prt of a preplaned mutual aid just like when an engine is sent to a neghboring district on sertain calls, so when the AFA gets toned out alot of the time DC911 gets a call and is told no units are avalable. free towns are nuts if you ask me. The bids came in that high for a reason you want dedicated units and that is the way to go. I am waiting to see what is going to hapen to western Dutches county with several depts. depending on free service from comercial EMS and not having dedicated units and several of these depts. are now taking there BLS units off the raod and depending soley on a comercial unit that can be 20 - 30 minutes away. Even Arlington that has 3 buses is constantly running out of units and depanding on mutual aid to cover. I have seen responce times of 30 + minutes to calls that were dispatches as CPR in progress, what is the point. I am a Dispatcer and EMT for on of the comercial agancys in Dutchess and it is time that town boards wake up and realise that they are liable to provide coverage for thier townships. there have been some instances in other states were towns and their boards have been sued and payed HUGE setlments and then the volly dept was shut down and an all payed fire and ems dept was formed. Also in some areas (Las Vegas and Denver) for a comercial agency to run 911 calls they have certain requierments such as a certain # of bariatric buses on at all times, specialy trained medics, and so on. They need to wake up in this area and start planing now since at this rate I give vol. EMS 5 years and Fire posably 10 years in Dutchess. I know that EMS is easy to blame comercial agencies but who is going to get blamed when it takes 4 dispatches to get a crew out for a structure fire and this has already hapened several times in Dutchess County. The only true answer is going to be a complete redesign of the fire and EMS service in dutchess county. I am not in any means trying to say that there should not be vol. Fire and ems but some thing needs to be done befor we start paying with human lives.

Dutchess does have a system but when contract services play games, and lets be real all of them do at one time or another, the county plan goes out the window. At one time I had heard that dutchess wants to have all EMS police and fire vehicles in the county GPS tracked and they mould monitor locations of all vehicles and private EMS would have to call out of service on a transport individualy and then THE CLOSEST UNIT regardless of who it is or who has a contract but I dont see this happening anytime in the next 5 to 10 years. What is the story with the 4 town contract out in Pawaling, Beekman, Dover and Unionvale. is there a decision made about it yet or who are they looking at. What are they looking for in the way of coverage?

NDP is no longer in pawling as of this morning. Alamo is covering the pawling area for now. Pawling does not operate a BLS bus they do respond to calls with EMT's however all transports are handled by private services. Now its just time to wait and see how long it takes Alamo to start droping calls in Pawling since several of the calls in Pawling that NDP got from DC911 were center for rehab private calls to Alamo that they had no units avalible for. I wish Alamo the best in Pawling.