PHOENIX — The Phoenix Fire Department plans to put more full-time ambulances on the street this year to improve response times and keep up with the growing number of patients being transported to the hospital.
When seconds count, Phoenix residents have been waiting nearly 11 minutes, on average, for an ambulance to be dispatched to take their location to take them to the hospital.
"Anecdotally, you occasionally hear the stories about things taking a little bit longer than they think they should be to get there," said Phoenix City Council Member Ann O'Brien.
On Wednesday, the city council approved an ambulance reallocation plant to convert 10 part-time ambulances to 6 full-time ambulances.
"When you need emergency services, this will help us to better serve our citizens," O'Brien said.
To staff the ambulances, the city will add approximately 50 jobs, which can be done within the existing fire department budget.
"We want our community to rest assured that we are looking at this every day to make sure that we can maintain service and meet those response times to our community, said Phoenix Fire Chief Michael Duran.
For nearly two years, the ABC15 Investigators have been airing complaints from Phoenix residents who say they were refused an ambulance. They said when they called 911, needing emergency medical help, firefighters convinced them that a relative should drive or they didn't need to go to the emergency room at all.
A state law, which went into effect in 2022, says paramedics and EMTs may not "counsel a patient to decline emergency medical services transportation." Since the law changed, Phoenix firefighters have been transporting about 35 more people a day to the hospital.
Chief Duran said the next step is deciding how to best allocate the ambulances to fire stations across the city.
"We’re always looking at where we can improve our response times and also balancing out the level of the call volume activity that we’re seeing," the fire chief said. He hoped to have the ambulance crews hired and the six ambulances to be ready to roll 24/7 by May.
