Brookhaven leaders petition Georgia for control of ambulance services amid EMS response delays

BROOKHAVEN, Ga. — Brookhaven Mayor John Park and a group of other city leaders announced Thursday that they will petition the state to let them take over control of the city’s ambulance service.

The effort comes after multiple and prolonged delays in emergency response in Brookhaven, according to officials.

Among the examples listed by Park and other officials were ambulances taking sometimes up to an hour to arrive at a scene to help those in need, including for pepper spray discharges and injury victims.

Part of the issue, according to the mayor, is due to how ambulance services are overseen in the state. In Georgia, the state’s Department of Public Health - Emergency Medical Services governs oversight and management of ambulances and EMS.

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Through that setup, Brookhaven’s ambulance needs are handled by DeKalb County’s government.

Brookhaven officials said Thursday morning that the county needed to work on addressing the needs of the city for medical services.

“This is no longer a matter of if someone is going to lose their life over DeKalb County’s lack of response. Now we are at a point where the question is how many more will have to die before Brookhaven can take this service over,” said Mayor John Park. “The time is up for DeKalb County to fix their ambulance problem.”

DeKalb County contracts with a private vendor American Medical Response (AMR) to provide emergency management services to its cities, and contract oversight is under the control of the DeKalb County Fire & Rescue Department.

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According to Brookhaven officials, delayed response times have yet to be improved, even ignoring the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020, Brookhaven and North DeKalb County worked together to create a new Emergency Medical Services Hub on Buford Highway, with Brookhaven purchasing and renovating it and leasing the facility to the county at no cost.

Despite the EMS hub, “response times have not improved,” according to city officials.

The city said in a release that for multiple years, DeKalb County “consistently fell short in EMS response times per their contract with their private vendor…and well short of comparable cities and national standards.”

“In DeKalb County, the 90% EMS response goal in 2023 was 12 minutes. However, the DeKalb County EMS provider’s actual average response time in 2023 for those criteria was almost 20 minutes,” Brookhaven officials said.

Now, the city is petitioning the state to let them handle the service themselves.

“This isn’t the first time that Brookhaven has requested that State (The Georgia Department of Public Health-Emergency Medical Services) grant Brookhaven the authority to provide ambulance service. I have requested it twice before,” City Manager Christian Sigman said. “So, we are stepping up to the plate one more time, and hopefully the Department of Public Health will see that there is everything to gain and nothing to lose by giving Brookhaven the go-ahead.”

In a presentation published by Brookhaven officials, AMR’s response time rarely met the standards needed.

“...less than 50% of the time, AMR meets the 12 minute or less standard for Priority 1-3 calls,” the presentation said.

The private vendor for DeKalb County, American Medical Response, responded to requests for comment from by Channel 2 Action News regarding the response times and issues mentioned by Brookhaven officials, saying:

“American Medical Response (AMR) values our longstanding relationship with DeKalb County and the communities we serve, including Brookhaven. We are actively engaged with DeKalb leadership in an ongoing fashion to strengthen the EMS system throughout the entire County through meaningful, innovative, and significant system investments. We are committed to providing the highest level of emergency medical services available to the communities that we serve, and we continue to work with our partner agencies on finding equitable solutions to address any EMS system-related challenges.”

The next meeting of the Georgia Department of Public Health-Emergency Medical Services for Region 3, which contains DeKalb County, is May 9.

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