Sherman considers outsourcing nonemergency EMS service

As Sherman continues to grow, city officials are looking for ways to ensure that city first responder focus is on emergency calls. For Sherman, that means possible changes could be made to how emergency medical services respond to calls to ensure the best tools and resources are sent out in response.

Among the ideas discussed was outsourcing non-emergency calls to an outside provider, which would allow Sherman first responders to focus resources and personnel to true emergencies.

“That’s the name of the game, right; It’s running EMS,” Sherman Executive Director of Public Safety Zachary Flores said during the recent Sherman budget retreat. “They go on a lot of EMS calls, but as I mentioned earlier, we look at a granular movement. So, what we need to know if that they’re running on the things they need to.”

The potential changes to EMS came as a part of discussions of upcoming or proposed projects within the department including a potential merger of fire stations 1 and 2, additional personnel and equipment. A recurring theme of the discussion was increasing efficiency within the department and bolstering the number of firefighters that are on each vehicle that responds to an emergency.

“So, we need to be making sure they we are doing the right thing with these resources and it’s heavy on EMS,” he said.

Emergency dispatchers receive many calls throughout the day ranging from emergency cases to what Flores described as “omegas” or situations that are not an emergency.

“Someone actually called 911 because their McDonalds order was wrong,” Division Chief Bart Bowman said. “That’s going to come into dispatch, crazy calls like that.”

Among these calls over the past year were about 1,200 lift assists, where callers needed assistance getting up after a fall. In many of these cases, the caller was not injured. Flores said these and similar calls could potentially be handled by an outside source.

“They weren’t hurt or probably weren’t hurt…we got there, assessed them and then we treated it as an emergency,” Flores said, noting that emergency personnel and equipment is often sent out.

City staff said these calls often tax the departments resources and take away from what is available for other duties. During the budget talks, Flores said that emergency vehicles often respond with as little as two first responders on board and can be required to wait until additional assistance arrives in order to work a call.

“That’s a lot of time that these guys doing emergency services are out doing non-emergency service,” he said. “I think I figured out last week that it was around 900 hours a year that our crew is out of service to go help.”

Flores has spoken with two private providers and is currently exploring the cost and feasibility of this option. He noted the city has already worked with outside providers in the past when the department was backed up with other calls.

This is not the first time a local department has opted to use an outside provider for emergency medical services. The city of Denison announced it would outsource its EMS services to outside provider in 2019 but initially backed away from these plans. The city later returned to these plans while it worked to hire and train new paramedics for the department.

Then Denison officials announced during its budget retreat in 2021 that it was entering into a long-term agreement with LifeNet, but backed away from these plans and returned to internal service later than year.