OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – EMSA is experiencing delays in their arrivals to calls and it’s not just an Oklahoma problem. EMSA officials said that long wait times are a nationwide issue due to the pandemic and staffing issues, just like people are seeing in hospitals.
One Oklahoma City man said Tuesday that he experienced it firsthand when he called for an ambulance.
“For me, it’s a constant state of stress,” said Phillip Tinnin, a man who said he experienced long wait times for an ambulance on multiple occasions.
Imagine living with COPD, diabetes, and a triple aneurysm. At times you struggle to breathe and call 911. The only problem is that they end up taking about an hour and a half to get to you.
“If I covered your face and you couldn’t breathe for quite some time, how scared would you be?” Tinnin said.
This has been the life of 60-year-old Phillip Tinnin for the past four or five months. He said he’s called EMSA at least five times in that span. Tinnin is also on oxygen, disabled and bound to a wheelchair. He was injured in the May 2013 tornado that ripped through Moore. At times he said he has to ask his neighbors to help him.
“That’s inconvenient because I have to put neighbors, you know, inconvenience them,” Tinnin said.
Over 200 people live in his Oklahoma City apartment complex. He said EMSA is there, usually more than once per day. He said wait times continue to be a problem for everyone.
“I can’t blame them for that,” he said.
“There are a number of obstacles that we’re facing right now, hospital bed delays, COVID, you know, some of our staffing numbers are lower than we need them to be,” said Adam Paluka, the chief public affairs officer for EMSA.
Paluka said the western division, like Edmond, Oklahoma City and other small cities, average well over 300 calls every 24 hours. That’s about seven percent higher than even just last year during the height of the pandemic.
“Every month, it seems like we’re breaking call volume records,” Paluka said.
Due to Omicron, Adam said between Oklahoma City and Tulsa upwards of 50 field medics have been out at a time. They’ve also had to have crews divert to go to higher priority calls. Some medivs will even sit with patients waiting for a hospital bed to open. According to Paluka, the healthcare systems are all pieces to a puzzle and when one of them is affected, all of them are.
“We’ve been working tirelessly to fix that,” Paluka said. “We’re going to get there as quickly and safely as we can.”
“I’m not the only one having a problem, and it’s just something that needs to be looked at,” Tinnin said.
Tinnin said he tries to stay away from the hospital and only calls when he needs to, especially since he’s susceptible to COVID-19. Meanwhile, this comes on the heels of EMSA’s president and CEO resigning last week.
Paluka said they are working to fix the problem, at times sending out credentialed administrative staff, among other things.