Community Care Ambulance
Informed Critical Decision Making
Challenges
Prior to 2007, Community Care Ambulance, in Ashtabula, Ohio, relied entirely on radio and phones to carry out all communication between crews and dispatchers. Vehicle crews had to call dispatch to provide status and location updates, resulting in excessive internal phone volumes and a dependence on inefficient manual processes to make critical decisions. “We found that our dispatchers were spending more time talking to our crews than to our customers,” explains Julie Rose, Executive Director for Community Care Ambulance. Community Care Ambulance wanted a technology solution that would help improve information management and speed their delivery of service.
Solution
It takes a forward-thinking organization to embrace new technologies. Community Care Ambulance was excited to implement Mentor’s EMS solution because, ultimately, they are accountable to their clients for their performance. Decreasing call volumes between their own units and dispatch would allow Community Care Ambulance to improve operational efficiency, and better serve clients.
Designed specifically for the EMS industry and running on Mentor Ranger® in-vehicle computers, Mentor’s EMS Mobility application enhances vehicle crew/dispatch communication and allows for dispatching of call details quickly and accurately. Crews can update their status in real-time, automatically providing location, mileage, and time data back to dispatch.
Says Julie: “This technology has freed up a lot of time for dispatchers so that they can make more informed and proactive decisions. With the GPS integration, we have a higher level of integrity in our time stamp and mileage data.”
Client View
Community Care Ambulance is contracted to provide 911 emergency services for several communities as well as serving healthcare facilities with critical care and non-emergency interfacility ambulance, wheelchair van, and shuttle transports to an area extending across 700 square miles. As an organization that provides critical services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, throughout multiple counties, they now rely on sophisticated communications technologies to streamline their operations.
Says Mike Ferron, Communications Center Supervisor at Community Care Ambulance: “As our business grew, every trip that we took amounted to seven phone calls to dispatch. This increase in phone volume started overwhelming our dispatchers, and consequently, they were spending less time interacting with our customers.”
Mike believes these excessive call volumes were symptomatic of a greater problem for Community Care Ambulance. “Our logistic decisions started to degrade as well. This decline led to an increasing trend of inefficiencies. We felt that technology could add a higher degree of integrity to data, allow us to spend less time managing problems, and provide a clearer view of operations.”
Community Care Ambulance turned to Mentor Engineering to provide the technology to help improve information management and speed service. The Mentor EMS solution has significantly improved dispatch operations. Dispatchers now have the tools at their fingertips to make better informed decisions and deliver a higher level of customer service. “Because we provide service over such a large geographic area, this technology enables us to know exactly where our vehicles are in order to give the client an accurate ETA,” explains Julie Rose, Executive Director of Community Care Ambulance.
Looking back on the experience, Julie says: “I was amazed with how well Mentor coordinated this implementation. This project was the most well prepared, thought-out, and organized implementation I have ever been a part of.”
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Data Sheets
White Papers
Because we provide service over such a large geographic area, this technology enables us to know exactly where our vehicles are in order to give the client an accurate ETA. 
