F-M Ambulance had a record-breaking day Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2017, with 122 calls for service in 24 hours that day, beating the old record of 107, which happened during the Fargo Marathon. The next day they responded to 106 calls.
Sherm Syverson, senior director of F-M Ambulance, said this is remarkable for several reasons. The average number of calls is 60 per day. The annual total for some of our outlying communities does not reach 122 in a year. And volumes remain very high, we are expected to surpass 30,000 total calls by the end of the calendar year. Compared to 2016 this would total 3,000 additional calls.
F-M Ambulance is owned by Sanford Health, here are some interesting facts about the service they provide in the Fargo area:
Territory
The annual average is nearly 22,000 calls and most of them are from Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo. However, F-M Ambulance also serves nearly all of Clay County, Minnesota; and in North Dakota, they cover Fargo, West Fargo, Mapleton and Harwood. They also help other communities within Cass County when there are patients who have additional needs.
Response Time
Response time is how long it takes for an ambulance to respond to a call for help. The goals are driven state guidelines that require F-M Ambulance to respond within eight minutes and 59 seconds 90 percent of the time. F-M Ambulance far exceeds that goal and usually hovers around 97 percent.
Preparing for Unique Situations
During the day, there are 10 ambulances operating. Two of those were added in January 2017 to prepare for the opening of Sanford Medical Center Fargo in July. Each ambulance is strategically positioned throughout the community based on data that helps predict where calls are most likely to occur and at what time of the day.
High Volumes
“We do have what is called all-page status when we page out to every EMT and paramedic on our team and ask them to report to the station ASAP. We did not have to conduct an All-Page on Tuesday or Wednesday. We have been preparing since January for the opening of Sanford Medical Center Fargo, and we were simply prepared to handle it,” said Sherm.
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Posted In Emergency Medicine, News
