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SpatialNews.com Press Release
Pinellas County, Florida, Implements Cutting-Edge Solution for Emergency Medical Services
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Redlands, California — Sunstar Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Pinellas County, Florida, has deployed an advanced geographic information system (GIS) solution that helps the county ambulance service provide more accurate and expedient emergency planning and response. The solution is used to place ambulances in the best possible locations, track vehicles in real time, and provide intelligent time-of-day-based routing that improves response capabilities for its entire fleet. The result is faster response times, which can make all the difference in an emergency.
“The Sunstar EMS operation had new and more stringent emergency response time requirements beginning in October 2004, and utilizing the traditional automatic vehicle location (AVL) tools alone was not going to be enough to be successful with our new standards,” says Jim Pennington, director of Information Technology for Sunstar EMS. “Paramedics Plus, the contractor organization under Sunstar, turned to GIS and the ESRI-based solutions for advanced applications that would provide a new level of service. These applications provided our organization with new tools and methods for planning, implementing, and monitoring the deployment of our [68] ambulances in Pinellas County.”
Paramedics Plus selected Washko & Associates for system status management (SSM) implementation and consulting services. Washko & Associates helped Paramedics Plus learn to effectively implement the Mobile Area Routing and Vehicle Location Information System (MARVLIS), which provides a complete solution for SSM through enhanced GIS. MARVLIS is an ESRI-based application suite from ESRI business partner Bradshaw Consulting Services, Inc. (BCS).
MARVLIS uses ESRI technologies for high-level spatial data management, desktop query, analysis, and visualization functionality; as well as optimized routing capabilities.
Since deploying the system, Pinellas County EMS has attained tremendous results. The contractor not only met its 92 percent benchmark but is exceeding it by maintaining nearly
94 percent on-time incidence response since system implementation. The agency has been able to do this with fewer scheduled vehicles, maximizing resources and achieving cost savings in the process.
Pinellas County, Florida, is populated with nearly 950,000 year-round residents. It is a peninsula bordered by the Gulf of Mexico on the west and by Tampa Bay on the south and east. Located in the west central portion of the state, the county is 38 miles long and 15 miles wide at its broadest point. Its land area covers approximately 289 square miles.
About ESRI
Since 1969, ESRI has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS, ESRI software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. ESRI applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. ESRI is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit ESRI at www.esri.com.
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