Monday, January 28, 2008
Administrative Center
Auditorium – Basement - 190
10:00 a.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT: Chief Edward Kondracki, Chief Gregg Cleveland, Chief Don Dominick, Vicki Burke, Sheriff Steve Helgeson, Steve O’Malley, Chief Scott Alo, Randy Roeck
MEMBERS EXCUSED: Dr. Eric Voter, Steve O’Malley
MEMBERS ABSENT: Interim Chief Tim Hauser, Bruce Ranis
OTHERS PRESENT: Jay Loeffler, Patti McDonah, Assistant Chief Randy Loken, Ann
Willford, Jim Klock, Matt Zavadsky, Donn Martin, Cory Lynch.
CALL TO ORDER:
Committee Chair Chief Kondracki called the meeting to order at 10:04 a.m.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES:
MOTION by Burke/Dominick to approve the Amended meeting minutes of December 17, 2007. Motion carried unanimously.
PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATIONS ADMINISTRATOR’S REPORT – Jay Loeffler
Jay included a hand out of the Statistics Comparisons for 2007 to 2006 and the Public Safety Communications Monthly Report.
Jay made known the following facts regarding the 911 Center.
· January 4, 1983 was the very first 911 call ever taken in La Crosse and a total of 14 calls were taken that day.
· There have been almost 560,000 - 911 calls since the beginning of 911 and total calls including 911, Non-Emergency and Outgoing calls of 7.6 million.
· La Crosse was the 9th County in Wisconsin to have a 3 Digit Emergency Number.
· Today, there is an average of 80 - 911 calls per day.
· 70% of 911 calls today are wireless.
· July is the busiest month for 911 calls with Friday being the busiest day of the week.
Jay continued to review the Monthly Report and Statistics indicating increases and declines in calls and their relationship.
Regarding staffing, Jay pointed out that Marsha Alens will be retiring in February and will be the first telecommunicator to retire from the department. Marsha started in 1981 with the Sheriff’s Department and was moved to the 911 Dispatch Center in 1983 when they were combined. Marsha has been employed with La Crosse County for a total of 26 years.
Testing is underway for a telecomunicator eligibility list. There will be replacement hired for Marsha and also for another retirement expected by the end of the year from that list.
EMD – The Agreement was approved by Judiciary and Law on January 8, 2008 and unanimously approved by the County Board on January 17, 2008. Gundersen Lutheran has been working on some personnel issues so there hasn’t been a date set when this will go into effect but Jay is working with them. Jim Klock advised they have another training class coming up in Emergency Medical Dispatch in March. The technical issues needed prior to the implementation are already there and the rest of the enhancements will be continued even after implementation.
Jay said until the new system was put into operation 911 lines could not be transferred but the new phone system allowed that capability. There are 5 lines that can be transferred at one time, which covers the majority of the time. Traditionally there are only 5 people at most working but there are times during major storms, etc. more than 5 calls may need to be transferred at one time. When the call is transferred, it locks up that line, so if a call is transferred to Rochester State Patrol it ties up the line as long as they are on it, even though we are not. We have to have the capability above those 5 lines so they are being added this week. Each consol position will have at least one line and they can borrow off the other ones that are not busy at the time. Three lines will be added making of total of 8. There are 7 consol positions, 8 if you include the administrator position which has never been used as an actual position, but in an emergency can be brought into the dispatch center. It is set up so that each consol position does not compete with the other. Sheriff Helgeson questioned; if 8 lines were being used, does the caller get a busy signal? Jay said all the calls will still come into the system, but they just won’t have the capability of transferring those calls.
Chief Kondracki asked how things are going with false calls. Jay said they still get them but not to the extent they used to. People aren’t purposely making false 911 calls but there are still a lot of false rings from kids playing, etc. and there is always an officer sent to check it. Jay said there has not been a prosecution since some bomb threats were being made in the Central High School area and the person was located.
Chief Kondracki brought the incorrect date on the resolution to Vicki Burke’s attention. There are two areas which were signed as 1/8/2007 rather than 1/8/2008. Vicki would check on it.
BENCHMARKS FOR ANSWERING EMERGENCY CALLS FOR EDC AND QUALITY ASSURANCE BENCHMARKS FOR EMD – Chief Cleveland
Benchmarks or Answering Emergency Calls for EDC – Hand out.
Chief Cleveland said there were basically two parts he would like to present to the board today and hopefully have the board approve as a benchmark. The first one comes down to looking at our own 911 Center and the ability to process calls in a timely manner. Chief Cleveland said what he has for the Boards consideration is basically a draft of a procedure based on the National Standard for basically Public Communications systems. There is an entire standard that is written on it which comes from a Technical Committee made up of people who use and operate and enforce 911 Centers. The standard is made by the Technical Committee members and is published by the National Fire Protections Association Standard 1221. Essentially what we’re looking for is taking a look at the performance standards for processing 911 calls. In Chapter 7 of the National Standard, it basically says that 95% of the alarms received on emergency lines shall be answered within 15 seconds and 99% of alarms shall be answered within 40 seconds. It goes on to tell you how you calculate those and talks a little bit about the processing of the calls and performance requirements for the processing of emergency calls as well. Further on the Standard that was basically extracted talks about how calls are transferred and the performance requirements for transferring these calls. One of the things this says is that for 911 Centers, basically the standard is not adopted in Wisconsin and applies specifically to Public Safety Communications Agencies but again, one of the things that affect us is that the Insurance Services Office, (ISO) uses the standard to grade Fire Departments on how they handle and receive calls in general. Basically we are held to that particular standard and if we take a look at that, essentially what it says is that we’re verified and held to these performance standards in terms of getting a score, so that rates community information or community insurance for all of our properties and insurance in La Crosse. Although the State has not particularly adopted this, it is a standard that basically all Fire Departments are held to and it’s universal across Wisconsin whether it’s La Crosse or whether it’s Shelby or whether it’s West Salem. They all have to be in compliance with this particular standard. Chief Cleveland said what he would do is identify this and have the Board adopt this as a benchmark to see how close we can meet this standard and hopefully it will provide us some feedback. He is assuming we can probably meet it or be very close in meeting it and provide feedback as to how well we are complying with the standard and if there are some things, at least it helps us evaluate it and put us on a road map to the future in the event we can’t meet it. Chief Cleveland said that was the first issue and would like to open it up for questions.
Chief Kondracki asked what kind of standards we are judging ourselves by now. Jay said we really don’t have any set standards. Chief Kondracki said he is in favor of standards and that they are about to be re-accredited as a Police Department. He said he is always comfortable that the Community knows they are not flying by the seat of their pants but rather they are subscribing to some recognized standards. It’s a quality assurance for the Community and himself. At least there is a method to our madness, as you will.
Don Dominick conveyed that the Onalaska Fire Department is getting ready to go through another evaluation from Insurance Services Office and he reviewed information prior to being appointed in Onalaska and the biggest category of deficiencies the Community was penalized on was the Dispatch Center. They lost 33% of the possible score in receiving and handling alarms so he thinks if this standard, which again is called a standard and is a benchmark, but every taxpayer and every business and resident in Onalaska is being penalized. There are 20 possible points and they were only able to obtain 15 of the total and what he saw briefly going over the last review, it’s the biggest deficiency. He said it has a real value and he didn’t look to see if calculating those extra points would bring them to a lower standard, but with ISO the lower rating or the fewest number of penalty points that you should accumulate goes across the board to every business and everybody who has an insurance policy. Matt Z said he thinks it’s great to have standards and certainly understands the need to have ISO ratings for insurance premiums. There have been a lot of publications and research about dispatch standards specifically related to call processing times and the need has some variability in the standard for call processing times. Fire calls are pretty straight forward. There’s a fire and there’s an address and those alarms, as indicated in the NFPA standards are fairly straight forward. Law Enforcement calls which make up 94% of the calls that come into the 911 Center are not so straight forward. Medical calls are not so straight forward when trying to get the information and focus on accuracy of the information being relayed to the responding crews and getting correct addresses and those types of things. That’s were with fire calls, Fire Departments need this type of standard for ISO rating that make more sense to do for fire calls but there are a number of other issues that come into play with Law Enforcement and medical issues. The current research shows that it’s actually better to stay on the phone a couple extra second and get good information and quality information dispatched to the crews to make sure it’s the right place and the right way and provides additional information to responding Law Enforcement vehicles and officers. And maybe looking at adopting a standard for fire calls for sure, because that clearly seems to be where it’s coming from. Chief Cleveland said again, taking a look at the standard, it does include medical calls. In fact, if you look at the scope of the standard, it does identify medical calls in terms of the processing. The one issue it also does go into, as Matt has alluded to, is there is a particular provision in 1221 that basically says under chapter seven that the authority having jurisdiction would then identify Law Enforcement and more or less those would be segregated out and you would have to establish those under Law Enforcements domain. For example in domestic situations there is some flexibility in 1221 to do that and so basically what we would have to do is set standards. Law Enforcement would have to get together and set whatever standards they would want to have done but the scope of the document does include both medical and fire calls so it still would be applicable. There would be calls that would not quality if you had a special circumstance. A domestic, where you had hostages, a medical call or fire that may not be an eligible call for you to be evaluated. But the bottom line is that the standard does include medical, it does include fire and it does include all others except for Law Enforcement calls that would be of a special nature as he has described.
Matt Z asked if that should then be reflected in this document which basically says all calls. Chief Cleveland said that certainly could be done. He said he offered this as a draft and he thinks we have to get the benchmarks done and obviously working with Jay we would want to identify Law Enforcement as separate but include the call processing and make sure the transfer times and our own reporting procedures reflect the national standard. Chief Kondracki said he feels it’s a good idea and Matt has a valid point as well. Let’s face it; a hostage situation might turn around differently than a bicycle theft so there is a wide gamete of what we actually do.
Chief Kondracki asked Jay how he felt about it. Jay said he would definitely like to be able to review these. As an example, the point after number 4, transferring calls within 30 seconds. Just taking the basic information off an emergency medical call which is; 1.) answering the phone, 2.) determining what the address is, 3.) verifying the address, 4.) what is the phone number, 5.) verifying the phone number, 6.) what is the problem we need to relay, and telling them to stay on the line while we transfer the call. In a perfect situation where they know exactly what they are saying with short answers it takes 32 second to do that. So we’re not going to exceed transferring these calls 95% of time in 30 seconds by going through this when someone actually reads scripted answers to that. Jay said another issue to deal with is something called call blinking, where 911 calls from cellular calls actually have a few seconds of no information coming across. They are talking but we’re not receiving so if they told us what the problem was or what the location is, that’s going to have to be repeated. All these things come in to play so some of these standards are things that we can’t control. In a perfect situation it’s great, but in the situation where the person starts rambling on and doesn’t know where they are, the 30 seconds isn’t a realistic time. Chief Kondracki asked how hard it would be to look at 2007 as it compared to these standards. He asked if it is in a format that we could see where we are with these standards and if we need to modify the standards to be more realistic based on each Community is different in some respect, would it be possible to do that for the next meeting. Jay said it may be possible but we do not have the software to determine statistics. That was not purchased with this system and he is assuming it is because it was too expensive. However Jay said we do capture data and we have a Supervisor who is able to take some of that data and transfer it into spread sheets so it’s a possibility that she may be able to do that but we do not have the software that came with the program in order to get this. Chief Kondracki said he would like to get a feel for how we stand and how close we are to meeting these National Standards. Matt Z said those are good points but the computer records from reviewing dispatch centers for accreditation isn’t always the reality for what actually happened. The dispatchers will often times do things that need to be done right away, hit the buttons and put it into the computer afterwards so the process requires some tape reviews and it is a pretty significant process. In this particular case the EMD portion, by the agreement we have in place, the call is not even transferred to the medical communication center until after the First Responders are dispatched which adds additional time to this process so 30 seconds might be really unrealistic if you want the First Responders dispatched before the call is transferred. Chief Kondracki said he would hate to find out that the National Standard is 30 seconds and the reality in La Crosse its 5 minutes and we ought to find out where we are in this area. He said he is not at all uncomfortable about coming up with police standards either because as much as we hold anyone’s feet to the fire, we in Law Enforcement should be responsive as well. Chief Cleveland said he pulled this off of ISO’s web site and it says ISO Field Representatives will examine call detailed recording reports for the previous 12 months to verify the time between initial phone ring and the operator answering the call. The representatives will also review computer rated reports to verify dispatched time. Chief Cleveland said all Fire Departments are being held to this standard and he thinks we should at least start to use it as a benchmark to see how it is we can get there. If there are improvements that need to be made to the system then he thinks those need to be taken into consideration and if need be, make recommendations to the appropriate committees to get things done because this is a particular standard that affects every fire agency in the County, not just one. We’re held to all sorts of standards. The Hazmat program is held to 472 and is competency based. There are just a billion different standard we’re held to that are performance related and each one of our divisions and programs need to make sure they meet those standards. He said he feels it is imperative that we get this put together and we start evaluating where we are and more importantly putting together and using it in a constructive manner to get us where we need to go in the future. He said it is imperative that we adopt these particular standards and then make our policies and procedures. Chief Kondracki said he agreed and asked if Chief Cleveland was suggesting we adopt these today. Vicki Burke responded no. Chief Cleveland said the fire department is certainly willing to come together and meet with Jay to make sure these things happen and to make sure we can meet those standards. He said it would be nice if we could do a conceptual thing today but if that was not the Board’s desire it certainly doesn’t matter but the most important thing is that we get where we’re going. Vicki Burke said she feels it’s good to have the ideas here but they need to have more discussion as far as the county is concerned because dispatch is responsible to the County and the County is the one that decides this.
Chief Kondracki said that is why Jay should prepare something for the next meeting so we have a feel for how close or how far away we are. He said it is the function of this Board to make recommendations and he would recommend that we have some sort of standard and is surprised there isn’t so we know if it is 30 seconds or 5 minutes, which is a big difference. Chief Kondracki directed Jay to prepare something for the next meeting so we have a feel as to where we’re at and asked if Jay was comfortable with that to which Jay said yes. He also asked if Chief Dominick’s situation had already passed so whether we moved on this today or in two months was it going to affect him.
Chief Dominick said it’s quite a lengthy process but when he was taking a look at liabilities or pretty evident deficiencies, he felt that as a committee we should be driven towards at least knowing where we’re at and we can’t go forward until we know where we’re at and who knows where those numbers will fall. He said responsibly we need to know where we are and he whole heartedly agreed that Jay should put this together. Jay asked, regarding the previous report Chief Dominick was referring to, was there a way he could get the information because this was the first he had heard of being deficient in dispatching procedures. Chief Dominick said they started a new process in January where the Fire Chief’s could have access to the records that were so secretive for so many years but to briefly say, he is trying to get a better definition as to what the categories are. What happened is that credit for the telephone service reviews facilities provided for the public to report fires including a listing of fire and business numbers which the maximum points is 2 and we got 1.9. Credit for operators, the number of operators on duty and communications center to handle the calls, of a possible 3 points we had 2.10. Dispatch circuit facilities to transmit alarms, of a possible 5 points we had 3.5. Jay asked if these were actual time standards or if these were on our capability on what we have physically. Chief Dominick said somewhere in there he is sure they will make reference to 1221 and that is what he is trying to find and what they actually look at. Jay said he had never heard of the study before. He said he knew when police were accredited they come in to us and do an audit and so forth and we have always done fairly well with the police accreditations. Chief Dominick said any evaluations he’s seen, they do show up to the dispatch centers as well and review that. He also said this evaluation is dated May 11, 1993. Jay said we have had two generations of technology changes since 1993 at least. Chief Kondracki said it is a very timely issue and he was glad it was brought up because we aught to look at just where we stand as far as the rest of the nation.
Chief Kondracki said he thought we pretty much agreed that rather than vote on this today we will wait until the next meeting and get a feel for where we’re at.
Quality Assurance Benchmarks for EMD – Hand out.
Chief Cleveland continued and said it comes down to what standards we can expect to use for EMD. We have talked about some of these standards before and this committee can only make recommendations but he said he thinks it’s important that the committee knows and understands some of the process that is going to go on here because we are responsible for oversight of the 911 Center. Both of these matters have been previously discussed in committee meetings leading up to the Agreement so what we would do is more less pass this out and have Chief Loken walk us through this document. Chief Loken handed out a document entitled Emergency Medical Pre-Arrival Instructions Performance Benchmarks. He said these have been seen by the committee before so they are not strange to the folks from Tri-State and Gundersen, himself, Jay and other committee members who where on EMD. He said we would look at this as another component to the overall process of dispatching response as it is transferring calls and communication in general. The dispatch time again in point 1 basically says that the Gundersen Lutheran Dispatcher shall answer the call and enter it into the CAD in 30 seconds and another 30 seconds to pick an ambulance to dispatch on the run 90% of the time so that is entirely straight forward as far as explanations go. Basically number 3 says that ProQa employee reports generated monthly will evaluate the following times. There are several components to the EMD process and several things they will be doing at Gundersen Lutheran processing this. Again the first section talks about the times and then if you look down to B the ProQa software they’re using can generate many kinds of reports for what they want to do and what you’re looking for. They can do it on an individual basis for dispatchers and of course for the staff in general. These are NAED benchmarks. Case entry is basically getting the information that you would get on any call Address, names, phone numbers and things of that nature are entered, then we identify why it is, what is the chief complaint, and why the person called 911 to begin with. Once this is identified there are key questions their dispatchers indeed will be asking. From there they go on to whether they are going to do pre-arrival instructions. There is a process to this, obviously and that’s the next step or they may give post dispatch instructions. There’s some flexibility and their dispatch will decide some of these components based on their software when those things happen. They don’t necessarily do pre-arrival instruction on every call so it depends and basically these are accuracy numbers, not speed but how accurate these things are entered into the computer. How accurately they identify the chief complaint and how accurately the right pre-arrival instructions are given. Again, it is a way for this board to see how well this process is working and kind of the same thing as the first segment we’ve talked about.
Chief Kondracki said he didn’t know if anyone had heard the 911 call when the tiger was killing folks at the zoo, but the dispatcher was trying to tell the brother of one of the individuals who was killed to calm down and provide him information and what you do now could go a long way to save his brother’s life. If you want to see an example of a frantic 911 call, you can imagine. And at the same time the dispatcher is trying to assure that the First Responders aren’t themselves going to meet the tiger.
Chief Kondracki said we just asked Jay to tell us how we currently line up in these National Standards and of course in this case, since we haven’t begun yet, it’s pretty hard to ask Gundersen how they meet these standards, but what’s Gundersen Lutherans feel on this. Jim Klock said they can certainly pull together some data on what they have been doing so far and can make a report for the next meeting. Chief Kondracki said at the next meeting we will have an opportunity to discuss these things and encourages the fire folks represented here today to get together with Jay to make sure we’re capturing whatever we can, and likewise if Jay can touch base with Gundersen it would be interesting to see where we’re at on all this. He said in his experience of policing we simply can’t afford to not have benchmarks or an idea where we’re at. It would be positive in keeping with the role of this board or why otherwise have this board if we don’t at least look at what’s happening and make recommendations for improvement.
Chief Roeck asked if at the next meeting Jay could actually bring in some examples of calls and a clock with a second hand showing the time. For example a perfect call and how long it took would help us look at this. Chief Kondracki said he thought this would be great and the only way we can improve our service delivery. He said he’s seen terrible examples, which are bound to happen, where Emergency Responders were sent to a North address when in fact the incident was at a South address which is a terrible scenario to be aware of. He asked if there was any further discussion on this matter. Chief Cleveland asked if there needed to be a motion and Chief Kondracki said we would just be directed to look at it.
Future Agenda items were discussed and Chief Dominick asked if a review could be done with the Dispatch Center operating under the realm of NIMS Compliant dispatching. He said they are not getting the Echo Communications and had been working without 10-Codes for quite a long time and we shouldn’t be doing that. He said he would like to see if we could standardize it. Jay said he understands Echo Communications but with NIMS he was under the impression they backed out of requiring their text now. Chief Dominick said he would like to be refreshed on it. Chief Cleveland said what we’re talking about is clear text language for compliance instead of 10-Codes. He said the Federal Government came out and said to be compliant, you had to abolish all your 10-Codes and obviously for Law Enforcement this was something that was somewhat engraved in them so there was quite a backlash from the Law Enforcement Community. The Federal Government said in order to be NIMS Compliant Law Enforcement could us their 10-Codes but they cannot use them on Multi-Jurisdictional responses. So that is the policy statement to be in compliance with NIMS. He said the Fire Service cannot use 10-Codes, which have obviously been gone for 15 years already so that is the current state of affairs with regard to 10-Codes.
ITEMS FOR FUTURE AGENDAS -
Jay Loeffler - Administrative Report
Jay Loeffler - Call taking – examples.
Jay Loeffler – Review with Dispatch Center on NIMS Compliant Dispatching
Jim Klock – Report on Gundersen ProQa.
Chief Dominick – Give update on ISO Standards.
NEXT MEETING DATE
The next regularly scheduled meeting date is April 28, 2008
ADJOURNMENT MOTION by Roeck/Dominick to adjourn at 10:53 a.m. Motion carried unanimously.
Disclaimer: The above minutes may be approved, amended or corrected at the next board meeting. Patti McDonah, Recorder