Pafford provides statistics from first year of service

Representatives from Pafford Emergency Services gave Starkville aldermen an update on its operations Tuesday night, detailing the ambulance company's first year servicing Starkville.

Since October of last year, Pafford has received 1,445 emergency calls in total. Of those calls, Pafford ambulances responded in under 10 minutes 94.4% of the time.

Calls that take more than 10 minutes to respond to help bring Pafford's compliance rating down. Since October, Pafford took longer than 10 minutes to respond to 81 calls.

This number puts the emergency service above the necessary 90% compliance that was agreed upon when Pafford first began servicing Starkville last year.

Operations Manager Tony Fabella pointed out that Pafford's compliance ratings for August and September, which were not included in the update presented to aldermen, were lower, at 92.8% and 92.2% compliance ratings month, respectively.

Fabella said Pafford has only improved since then.

“As you can see from August and September's numbers, when we were really new to the area, we actually have brought our compliance up two percent,” Fabella said. “So we are gradually getting better, learning the area.”

Under Pafford's system, emergency calls are divided into two categories — priority one and priority two — based on the urgency of the call. While both are still emergency calls and therefore treated with priority, priority one calls are typically responded to with more urgency.

Pafford's average response time for priority one calls since October was five minutes and seven seconds, while the average priority two response time at six minutes and three seconds.

Starkville Fire Chief Charles Yarbrough was with Pafford representatives at the aldermen meeting and said the company had delivered on the promises they made last year. for each

“They did everything we asked them to,” Yarbrough said.

Aside from their compliance ratings, Yarbrough said Pafford had helped remodel parts of the fire stations to better accommodate Pafford employees and the fire department staff.

This update comes just over two months after Pafford announced they were reducing the number of ambulances to service Starkville from three to two, a decision Mayor Lynn Spruill called the “elephant in the room.”

Fabella said the decision was based on the call volume they had received not being high enough to support the third ambulance's operation.

“On average, we need at least 100 calls per unit per month to be able to sustain the unit,” Fabella said.

Currently, an ambulance resides at Fire Stations 3 and 4.

Fabella also noted they were prepared to increase the number of ambulances in town during big events, as they did last year during Bulldog Bash when five ambulances were available.