This story was originally published by The Current GA.
Update: The dispatch software vendor, CentralSquare Technologies, sent a statement to include in the story. The article was updated with that statement at 12:40 p.m. on Feb. 29.
Approximately 2,200 addresses in Chatham County don’t show up accurately on the new computer software used in ambulances, one of several glitches that are complicating emergency services’ work to swiftly help people in need.
County officials have been aware of the problem for nearly six weeks. They say they are working to correct the issues hampering the $6 million software installed last fall in a push to decrease wait times for emergency help and save lives.
Yet paramedics are resorting to Google Maps to arrive at the right locations after glitches have impeded emergency responses to car wrecks and medical situations in areas such as Southbridge, according to Chatham Emergency Services CEO Chuck Kearns. The EMS leader raised red flags about the software to county commissioners in January.
In a statement to The Current GA Friday, County Manager Michael Kaigler confirmed the number of addresses that are not linked to the emergency services software, but he said concerns about the software are “minimal.”
He said county staff are fixing the data discrepancies by manually linking the missing addresses into the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.
Credit: Housing Savannah
Credit: Housing Savannah
“The new CAD system has exhibited excellent performance with minimal issues,” Kaigler said in a statement. “However, a concern raised by a partner agency suggests that approximately 2,260 addresses are not accounted for in the system.” The statement clarified the addresses are in the software but not connected properly to mapping.
In a statement, the Florida-based CAD vendor, CentralSquare Technologies, said the addressing issues are not related to their software but did not explain how.
“We take the accuracy and reliability of our solutions seriously and are working with the County’s partner agency on the address issues identified in this article, which are unrelated to CentralSquare’s software. We remain dedicated to providing dispatchers and first responders in Chatham County (and across the country) with accurate, real-time data to ensure the safety and well-being of citizens and visitors in their communities,” the statement said.
Reached by phone, District 6 Commissioner Aaron Whitely said digitizing CAD/RMS was supposed to make the processes more efficient, not less so.
“With over 2,000 locations that haven’t even been mapped, that’s unacceptable,” Whitely said. He said he planned to talk to the county manager about the issue.
‘The mapping is off’
On Oct. 10, 2023, Chatham County switched its CAD and records management services (RMS) — used by all county emergency and law enforcement agencies, except for Tybee Island — to a system run by CentralSquare. The changeover was intended to modernize the county’s aging emergency systems and handle Chatham County’s expected population growth.
Public statements from emergency officials and county documents obtained by The Current GA suggest the system had problems early on.
Credit: Chatham County
Credit: Chatham County
Computers inside the ambulances meant to display information from CAD about 911 calls were repeatedly crashing, program manager Kelvin Lewis told the county manager in a Dec. 21 memo. That left drivers without basic information about their destination, including medical information provided by the caller and cross streets to help identify a location.
The memo also said that the CAD system has been unable to generate basic statistics like response times.
“The program’s performance has been impacted by an undefined ‘gremlin,’ which we are working with the vendor to resolve as soon as possible,” Lewis wrote.
The memo also said that the CentralSquare contract had cost the county $2.4 million at that stage of the contract, with $3.6 million left to pay.
On Jan. 17, Kearns told county commissioners that first responders were repeatedly being sent to the wrong location on the dispatch software.
“The mapping is off. So in (one) instance, we were going to a car crash on I-16 near I-95. The mapping was telling our crews to go into Southbridge to get to a crash on the interstate,” he said.
The software should link ambulances to the closest street to where an emergency call originated from, but it has mistakenly sent ambulances to routes that aren’t accessible. That has forced ambulance operators to find other work-arounds, like free, commercially available mapping services.
Credit: Justin Taylor
Credit: Justin Taylor
“While Chatham County staff is actively working on linking these addresses to the routing tool, in the interim, first responders are utilizing alternative mapping tools such as Google Maps to determine the most efficient route,” the statement by Kaigler said.
911 in crisis
The challenges in implementing the county’s new dispatch service overlap with compounding problems at Chatham’s 911 center.
The center’s dispatchers feed crucial information about emergency calls, like location and details on the emergency, into the CAD system for use by first responders on their mobile computers. But reports suggest that information may not be making it into the CAD.
County commissioners have said the amount of complaints they receive about their 911 calls going unanswered has increased dramatically.
From 2022 to 2023 there has been a 37% increase in abandoned 911 calls, whereby a caller hangs up or the call goes unanswered, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Chatham 911 Communications Director Diane Pinckney told the newspaper this increase was due to better tracking of statistics, staffing shortages, high volume of calls exacerbating the shortages, and multiple people calling 911 at the same time.
She and other emergency officials also blamed callers for using 911 during non-emergency situations.
Credit: Chatham County
Credit: Chatham County
The center employs “call takers,” whose sole job is to answer the phone, question callers for basic information and route calls to available dispatchers, according to Deputy Director Russ Palmer. Dispatchers then coordinate the available fire/police units or route the call over to Chatham Emergency Services for an ambulance.
At the January commissioner’s meeting, District 1 Commissioner Helen Stone asked what the optimal number was for call-takers on a shift.
“If we were fully staffed, we would have four call takers on each shift,” Pinckney said. Dispatchers are able to answer calls when the call-takers are busy.
However, four call takers can be quickly overwhelmed during surges of calls, Palmer said at the meeting. During a recent surge, they had 150 calls in a 30-minute period, he said. Dispatchers must spend time talking to 911 callers instead of routing emergency vehicles.
The number seemed to flummox county commissioners. “Four people for a county of 300,000 … that does not sound adequate to me and I’m not even in the business,” Stone said.
Later in the presentation, Pinckney acknowledged that four people probably isn’t enough to handle the county’s needs.
“It is exciting to me that you all are aware of this now,” Pinckney said.
Credit: The Current GA
Credit: The Current GA
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