MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Tech World stepped in to help Memphis with a serious public health problem.
They’re called frequent fliers.
People who have abused 9-1-1 all for a free ride to the hospital.
WREG sat down and looked at the numbers.
In 2014, emergency responders answered 120-thousand calls for help.
Twenty-five thousand of those calls were not actual emergencies.
At $800 a ride and a very low collection rate, odds are you paid for those rides with your hospital bills and tax dollars.
Memphis dispatchers said they get hundreds of calls a day.
It’s a call for help, but statistics show, it’s being abused.
And the poverty rate is playing a role.
“We are now in a ‘you call, we haul’ mode,” Mayor AC Wharton explained.
That mode has lost the City of Memphis a lot of money.
Mayor Wharton said this IBM Smarter Cities grant could help change that for good.
“This will not be a fly in two days, and out of here. They will actually take up residence for three straight weeks,” the Mayor added.
That’s a $500-thousand service IBM has offered for free.
Their team will take a look at the big picture.
The role the hospitals, emergency responders and local clinics all play.
One of the ideas they brought up is having nurses check in with these patients at home, and also staffing them at the dispatch centers.
They said that would help the patient figure out what’s happening.
“They may need some type of help,” Michael Putt with the Memphis Fire Department explained. “But the ambulance and ride to the hospital may not be that help.”
These frequent fliers are not only costing you money, they are delaying service for real emergencies, and even sending EMS employees into emergency mode.
“I would say we run out of ambulances once a week,” Putt added.