A 911 for Georgia’s emergency response system is on the ballot
“Dr. O, ‘bout how long did they say ‘til that patient gets here?”
“I dunno. Dispatch said something like 10 minutes, but you know how that is.”
My sarcasm projects over the rustling of blue plastic gowns covering me, the nurses and residents in our trauma bay as we scramble to prepare the room.
“You put some wings in the back of a Toyota Yaris though, and Uber Eats will tell you exactly when it’ll get there. But a cardiac arrest patient in a $500,000 ambulance, heh, nobody has any real idea.”
The gallows humor helps ease the anxiety of my team waiting to spring into life-saving protocoled action. It’s sad that companies that deliver 12 lemon pepper wet flats (chicken wings) use a more sophisticated transport system than the humans coming to one of the busiest hospitals on the East Coast.
More than 30 years after Public Enemy gave us “911 is a Joke” to illustrate institutional neglect, our emergency dispatch infrastructure, frozen in time, can get dangerously close to a punchline. On Tuesday, Amendment 3 is on the statewide ballot, and it can help update our antiquated 911 system to make sure help arrives to everyone such that we can rewrite these lines.
911 system infrastructure largely unchanged since 1968
Working on the front lines with the first responders at the city’s primary receiving center for major trauma allows us to bear witness to the need for a Next Generation 911 (NG911) system. The 40 or so words on the ballot fail to capture how necessary this update is for the state of Georgia.
Currently, our analog system relies on infrastructure implemented and largely unchanged since 1968. It uses verbal confirmation of addresses and cross streets to find emergencies via land lines and a technically strained two-stage triangulation system for cellphones.
This system only gets Emergency Medical Services within 200 yards of the actual location of a call and gives no data on whether the emergency is on the roof of a building or in the pool on the ground floor.
A NG911 system will use technology similar to these consumer food delivery apps to better pinpoint locations of emergencies. Getting this information faster will decrease response times to callers, as seen in other cities that have implemented this system.
In addition to these needed efficiency gains, this type of system can better accommodate persons with speech difficulties and hearing problems by making Text-to-911 widely available. Not only would this serve persons with different abilities, but this would also benefit situations where callers must be silent such as in home invasions, domestic violence, and kidnapping.
To be sure, trepidation is necessary for any ballot initiative that suggests locking up state revenues for a specific “fund” and it is certainly true that the authors of our state constitution intended for the Legislature to have control over finances of the state for times when there is economic hardship.
However, this creates a constitutional amendment to permanently fund this system and puts this in the category of roads and the education state lottery. Even though our business centers can benefit from this update, our proud rural communities will also gain efficiencies with an updated system.
Because in a place like Ware County, with almost 1,000 square miles being served by one heroic EMS company, old-school cell tower pinging can mean the difference between life and death. Hence, a sustainable program of emergency calling is just as essential as these other constitutionally funded parts of our state.
Lawmakers unanimously supported this measure
Unlike many ballot initiatives, this is not merely kicking the proverbial can down the road to voters to let them decide they don’t like to spend money. This House Resolution has widespread bipartisan support with a unanimous vote in both the state House and Senate (162-0 and 49-0) and is the best way to guarantee funding for the future.
In Georgia, we pride ourselves on split ballots and political engagement. We host Super Bowls, some of the biggest golf events in the world and serve as a hub for every kind of professional gathering possible.
This is all possible in part because of our robust healthcare safety net that was tested with the Olympics park bombing of 1996 and still stands despite the closing of Atlanta Medical Center. We have the rare opportunity to invest in our community to make our system more modern and efficient.
NG911 systems are supported by the National Association of State 911 Administrators, International Association of Fire Chiefs, the International Association of Chiefs of Police and others. We should join this chorus of professionals on Nov. 3 and vote yes for Amendment 3.
Anwar Osborne, M.D., M.P.M., FACEP, is a dual board-certified emergency medicine and internal medicine physician working at Grady Memorial Hospital.
Kate Eisenbraun is a third-year medical student in Atlanta. Before medical school, she had a career as an emergency medical technician-basic in Chicago and San Diego. She also assisted in writing emergency preparedness protocols for a local health department and helped lead the Medical Reserve Corps in Waukegan, Illinois.
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The opinions expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.