West Tennessee Healthcare expands 911 center

JACKSON, Tenn. — The emergency medical dispatch center at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital began expanding a few months ago along with their coverage area.

“We’re still dispatching the 911 calls as we always have, it’s just now we are able to add more capacity, more dispatchers,” EMS Director Kevin Deaton said.

Deaton says the remodeling started back in May. They also expanded their 911 responses to include five counties.

“We are tasked with providing resource and any type of mutual aid assistance required in the EMS realm in any of the 17 counties in our region,” Deaton said. “We also dispatch ambulances and 911 responses to medical emergencies for the five counties in which we serve.”

Their old room served as the dispatch center for the past 17 years, having enough room for up to four dispatchers at a time. With this new upgrade, they were allowed to move into a much bigger space, allowing them to grow their current dispatch crew to at least four times the amount.

“This office handles over 100,000 calls, administrative calls per year, over 17,000 911 calls, and it results in more than 40,000 EMS transport,” Deaton said.

The renovation allowed them to expand their mapping systems, phones and communications equipment, creating an organized system and workflow.

“So the new dispatch center is giving us more of a linear type of positioning, so we’re able to give the dispatchers more space,” Deaton said. “We’re able to set up more monitors and more equipment.”

Deaton says the dispatch center can have up to 16 positions in the space, and he says they are planning to hire additional positions in the future.