Ledyard’s new ambulance service brings improvement

With American, average response times dropped significantly and there have been no missed calls

Ledyard — Results are in from the town’s first month with a new ambulance service and they are “outstanding,” according Mayor Fred Allyn III.

After one month of service from American Ambulance, the town has seen average response times drop significantly and there have been no missed calls.

There were also four “covered calls,” emergency calls in which the ambulance stationed at the town’s Emergency Services Building was already out on a call, so another ambulance was dispatched. In those four cases, ambulance coverage was provided by the American Ambulance on the Mashantucket reservation.

Town officials are finding that the service improvement is rather dramatic.

For the month of July, the average response time for American when responding to an emergency call in Ledyard was about eight and a half minutes, and there were almost no calls where the company took more than 12 minutes to respond, according to dispatch data.

That compares to service provided by the Ledyard Volunteer Emergency Squad which had been struggling to respond to calls before the

town replaced it with American. Back in March, town officials found that 40 percent of the time LVES response times were more than 18 minutes. By contrast, in the month of July, only 3 percent of American’s response times were more than 12 minutes.

“The transition has been great,” said Allyn, who praised the speed in which American Ambulance responded to calls last month. “I think that is really where we wanted to be in terms of response times.”

At the beginning of July, the town saw the end of an era as American Ambulance took over for LVES as the town’s ambulance service provider, ending LVES more than 40 years of service as the town’s primary ambulance provider.

The change came several months after town officials expressed concerns about LVES service, as the volunteer organization struggled to respond to calls quickly. At the time the group was enduring members quitting and internal strife regarding a discrimination complaint and previous leadership — most of whom abruptly resigned.

While town officials are pleased with American’s initial performance, they stress it’s still early in the transition and making sure American is delivering the best care will be an ongoing process.

“That’s great, I love that, but it’s just a snapshot,” said Allyn of the response times. “That’s the numbers for one month of transports and one month of calls, but one month doesn’t make a year or give them a lot of history yet.”