Additional data points presented to officials during a Wednesday Council of Governments meeting highlight the level of crisis that the county’s emergency medical services system continues to face.

“Dropped calls in Warren County are getting worse,” Paul Pascuzzi, chair of the COG’s Fire Services Committee, explained.

A dropped call occurs when the home agency for a given call fails to respond. The result is a delay in response until another availability entity can respond.

Pascuzzi said that there were 438 calls dropped by EMS agencies in Warren County in 2020.

That number increased to 719 in 2021 and there’s reason to believe 2022 isn’t looking better.

Pascuzzi said the dropped calls are “all predominantly from volunteer EMS agencies” and that the change marks a 64 percent increase year-over-year.

“(It’s) getting worse instead of better,” he added. “(The) shocking number is the numbers we see.”

Public Safety Director Ken McCorrison said that the situation is “continuing to get worse” in 2022.

“There are some agencies that have made improvements,” he said. “The agencies that have actually adopted a schedule… are making some improvements.”

He said designating a scheduler has shown improvement specifically in Pleasant, Youngsville and Sugar Grove but acknowledged that scheduling is a “huge commitment for these guys.”

While some responders have retired and other stepped out as a result of the pandemic, availability of the remaining responders is a key part of the challenge.

Pascuzzi acknowledged that elected officials are starting to feel pressure from these challenges.

He said they looked at the number of certified responders that responded to calls in a year. That number came in at less than 100.

McCorrison noted, though, that the total includes 25 responders with the City of Warren and 40 with EmergyCare, leaving just a few dozen responders for the rest of the volunteer agencies.

An EMS response plan is on the cusp of implementation that will allow agencies who know they don’t have staffing for a certain time to notify the 911 center and call out of service. That allows dispatchers to jump over the home agency and go straight to another agency that has response capabilities, speeding up the response process.