The City of Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications operates the primary public safety answering point (911) for all of Multnomah County. The County has been working actively with the City for several months to determine how to implement enhanced medical triage to allow for a more nuanced response by emergency medical services. Recently, the City has identified issues that the City and County agree will make it difficult to implement before the new ambulance services contract begins Sept. 1, 2018. The amended RFP will postpone the roll-out of an enhanced 911 medical triage system until the City of Portland’s 911 Bureau of Emergency Communications is able to implement such a system internally.
“My near-term objective is to focus on improving the responsiveness of, and the systems that support, emergency dispatch. While I would have preferred to have a private sector contractor absorb the cost of the new MPDS (Medical Priority Dispatch System), we have identified some significant barriers which prevent us from including this as part of the RFP process at this time,” said Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.All counties in Oregon are required to have an ambulance service plan that lays out the emergency medical system. In December 2016, Multnomah County updated its 1994 plan to allow for modernizing the system while retaining the solid foundation that has produced excellent results for the region over the last 23 years.
“People in Multnomah County receive high-quality prehospital emergency medical care,” said Dr. Paul Lewis, the Multnomah County Health Officer who oversees the pre-hospital emergency medical system. “Our goal is to continually improve the system so we can have the quickest and best response to true emergencies and an appropriate but less dramatic, less costly response to less urgent medical requests. A modern 911 medical triage system will improve care and reduce costs. As soon as BOEC is ready, we will work together to implement this change. We are disappointed in the delay, but in the end, County residents will benefit,” said Dr. Lewis.The 2017 RFP still includes system improvements such as that the selected ambulance services provider will be required to provide an electronic medical record for all first responders, will be required to provide quality improvement software, to meet clinical quality standards, and to address equity in both personnel and patient care.