BROOKHAVEN, Ga. — Brookhaven city officials are still petitioning over ambulance response times, begging the county to allow them to manage their own operations.
Mayor John Park and other city officials, including the police chief, held a news conference on Thursday morning to address the recent issues and announce a new plan to mitigate the issue.
"This is literally a problem that has life-or-death consequences," the mayor told news reporters. "We have tried to play nice. We have tried cooperation and collaboration."
Brookhaven officials want to switch companies due to complaints about slow EMS response times with the county's current company, American Medical Response (AMR). Currently, the DeKalb County Fire & Rescue Department is over the city's contracts.
DeKalb County first signed a contract with the ambulance company in 2019, despite hearing several complaints about the response times and even negligence over the years about the company. The contract spanned over five years with an end date of December 2024.
In 2020, the county opened a hub for the AMR ambulances in Brookhaven to hopefully reduce those times. Mayor Park said at Thursday's news conference that the city bought out an old gas station to use at the hub for the county, but that has not worked.
"People are waiting as long or longer than they did before," Park added. "I want to reiterate that I'm disappointed."
Despite the opening of the new hub, city officials continued to complain about the issues. In June 2023, Brookhaven officials officially began asking the county to allow them to start establishing their own ambulance operations.
"EMS services is probably the bedrock of local government," City Manager Christian Sigman said.
Sigman showed a chart at the news conference that showed an increase in response times over the five years. By 2024, it allegedly took AMR ambulances over 20 minutes on average to respond when its company praises a 12-minute average response time.
"COVID ended, and we are actually worse today than we were in COVID," Sigman added.
The city manager also expressed plans to write a letter to the Georgia Department of Health to start an investigation into the issue after briefing the city council. This would be the third time the State Department would look into the response times.
Brookhaven Police Chief Brandon Gurley also spoke at Thursday's news conference, where he gave several specific examples of calls with long response times that resulted in consequences for the patients.
Watch the full press conference in the video below:
Gurley said that the AMR ambulance took 34 minutes to get to a serious suicide call last year. He previously told 11Alive it's not uncommon to wait 50 minutes or more to get an ambulance on the scene. Gurley also said his team was learning how to perform first aid themselves.
"AMR's response time has been a problem for years," Gurley previously said. "Over the last two years, we've seen it grow."
Chief Gurley previously shared an example from a domestic violence call on June 19, 2023:
- 8:48 a.m. - An ambulance is requested.
- 9:20 a.m. - EMS hadn't shown up, police asked for an updated ETA.
- 9:26 a.m. - The victim has complications due to diabetes, so police upgraded the call.
- 9:40 a.m. - The ambulance unit tells their supervisor they did not receive a call. They had to return to the base before they could respond.
- 9:45 a.m. - DeKalb County Fire arrives to assist.
- 10:30 a.m. - When checking for an updated ETA, they found out dispatch canceled the call due to the firefighter's arrival with no update on needing assistance.
- "At 10:34, the victim gave up and said they would take themselves to the hospital," Gurley said. "And they had some significant facial injuries from the fight."
The city manager said they will brief the rest of the city council and allow the public to speak on the issue at their meeting on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.