The Emergency Services Interagency Medical Provider Assessment & Care Team (IMPACT) Project

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

Guilford County Emergency Services (GCES), like many EMS systems across the country, has faced various challenges over the past several years. These challenges include the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing call volume, increasing demand on hospital systems, declines in skilled workforce availability, increasing personnel costs, and economic instability. There has been a considerable impact on the availability of our ambulances and our ability to respond as traditionally expected. Response times, call holding times, and unit utilization have all increased significantly, leaving large geo-spatial resource deserts in the system. These resource deserts often affect population dense areas and further tax other public safety resources such as our fire partners for extended periods of time as they assist on medical calls. EMS availability delays encumber other public safety resources for longer, leaving them unavailable for their fire protection duties.