But you need to hurry. In the past, the Fire Department treated every call for medical help as a potential emergency. An ambulance would have rushed to the little girl as soon as it received the call for help. But Fire Chief Buck Dozier admits, not this time. For three months now, Metro's fire department has been operating under what it calls a Medical Priority Dispatch system.
Dispatchers ask callers about the patient's condition.
Then, they use a checklist to decide whether it's a true emergency or not. Where is your emergency. A little 5 year-old girl is having a seizure or something. Dispatch supervisor Capt. She says, because the caller told dispatchers the child was having a seizure, the Priority Dispatch checklist called for an ambulance to respond non-emergency.