By Wayne Gates
The ability of Brown County EMS squads to meet the demand varies greatly from department to department.
The News Democrat requested a list of how many EMS runs each local department was called out for from Sept. 1, 2018 through August 13 of this year.
The number of runs that the departments actually responded to was divided by the number of times that they were requested or “toned out” to get the following response rates.
The highest response rate was for Fayetteville, which responded 99.5 percent of the time when requested. The lowest was Aberdeen at 50 percent.
The departments ranked from highest percentage of response frequency to lowest are:
Fayetteville 99.5
Mt. Orab 99.3
Ripley 98.5
Georgetown 97.4
Hamersville 79.2
Sardinia 77.7
Higginsport 71.6
Russellville 54.7
Aberdeen 50.0
The presence of paid EMS staff on station before a call comes in makes a big difference, according to the numbers. Mt. Orab, Georgetown and Ripley all have paid staff on station 24 hours a day.
Fayetteville has paid staff on station Monday through Friday from 6am to 6pm, and paid staff responds from home other hours during the week to maintain 24 hour a day paid staff coverage.
Hamersville and Sardinia have paid staff 12 hours a day during the day.
Higginsport, Russellville and Aberdeen are all-volunteer departments.
The total number of EMS runs in Brown County during the 50 week period was 6242.
The department by department breakdown is as follows:
Fayetteville had 444 runs and handled 442 of them. They were covered by a Clinton County unit on one run and a Clermont County unit on another. Fayetteville also covered Mt. Orab three times during that period, making the number of “cover runs” less than one percent made by the department.
Mt. Orab had 1571 calls during that period, handling 1560 of them. Mt. Orab had the highest number of runs in the county. The MOFD was covered by Clermont County units six times, Fayetteville three times; and Hamersville and Georgetown one time each.
Total cover runs made by Mt. Orab was 70 or 4.5 percent of their total.
Ripley had 931 calls and covered 917 of them. Ripley was covered by Georgetown six times, Aberdeen five times, Russellville twice and Higginsport once. Ripley also covered 46 percent of Aberdeen’s runs, ten percent of Higginsport’s and 6.5 percent of Russellville’s. Total cover runs for Ripley was 209 or 23.9 percent of their total runs, the highest in the county by far.
Ripley covered 46 percent of Aberdeen’s runs, 10.5 percent of Higginsport’s and 6.5 percent of Russellville’s.
Georgetown had the second highest call total in the county at 1422, making 1384 of them. Georgetown was covered by Hamersville 20 times, Mt. Orab 13 times, Russellville twice and Sardinia, Higginsport and Ripley one time each. Total cover runs made by Georgetown was 102, or 7.4 percent of their total.
Hamersville had 443 calls, handling 351 of them. The department was covered by Clermont County units 44 times, Georgetown 41 times, Mt. Orab five times and Higginsport twice. Hamersville made 25 cover runs, 7.1 percent of their total.
Sardinia had 543 calls, covering 422 of them. It was covered by Adams County units 55 times, Mt. Orab 50 times, Russellville nine times and Georgetown seven times. Sardinia made 27 cover runs for 6.4 percent of their runs.
Higginsport had 134 calls and handled 96 of them. It was covered by Clermont County units 14 times, Ripley 14 times; and Hamersville and Georgetown five times each. Higginsport made four cover runs for 4.1 percent of their runs.
Russellville had 336 calls and handled 184 of them. It was covered by Adams County units 69 times, Georgetown 43 times, Sardinia 26 times, Ripley 12 times and Mt. Orab twice. Russellville made 13 cover runs, or 7.0 percent of their runs.
Aberdeen had 418 calls and handled 209 of them. It was covered by Ripley 192 times and by Adams County unites 17 times. Aberdeen made five cover runs for 2.4 percent of their total.
Units from Adams County covered 20.5 percent of Russellville’s calls, 10.1 percent of Sardinia’s and 4 percent of Aberdeens.
Units from Clermont County covered 10.4 percent of Higginsport’s calls and 10 percent of Hamersville’s.
Next week, The News Democrat will go behind the numbers, talking with local fire chiefs about what is working and what is not within the local EMS system and about exploring possible solutions.
