Pettis Co. ambulance district joins Sedalia Dispatch Center

The Pettis County Ambulance District will soon be dispatched out of the Sedalia Police Department’s Communications Center, meaning faster response times between dialing 911 and when EMS crews show up at your door.

Matthew Wirt with the Sedalia Police Department said, “About 85% percent of those calls are handled here within the city, so it made sense to move with our department.”

As of right now, if you live in Pettis County and have a medical emergency, you call 911. That call first gets sent to the Sedalia Communications Center and is then transferred. These workers currently receive about 32,000 thousand calls a year.

“Currently what would happen is that call would come here to our dispatch department, the dispatcher would dispatch a fire truck and also possibly police car depending on the nature of the medical instance, then transfer the call to a different jurisdiction to dispatch the ambulance, with this new agreement, that would happen all at the same time”, says Wirt.

Currently Pettis County Ambulance District pays Morgan County $26 thousand dollars a year for it’s services. With the new agreement the district would pay $174,000 the first year, which also includes the hiring of two new communications operators. After next year it would be $93,000 a year.

Although the Pettis County Ambulance District officials were busy training today and unavailable for an on camera interview, District Administrator Mike Gardner told us that they are excited about the new changes and said the cost difference is worth it.

“When someone calls 911 for an ambulance they will just have to deal with one dispatch center primarily, there would still be another dispatch center for some out of city calls, but that should still drastically reduce response time and the time delay we have currently been experiencing with moving a call to the jurisdiction”, said Wirt.

Gardner said Pettis County has had a great working relationship with those at the Morgan County Communications Center over the past few years, but it’s more convenient to go with the city of Sedalia’s because it’s in town.

The new agreement will take effect February 1, 2015. Between now and then, the Sedalia Police Department plans on expanding the current communications center by moving the current office into the basement.