How Technology Can Help Public Safety Staffing Shortages

It’s unusual that public safety professionals ever face the same challenges as the private sector, but these are unusual times. Not only is the industry facing blowback from the “great resignation,” but managers for almost every kind of agency are dealing with a workforce that is burned out by a relentless 2 years of crisis.

Consider the cold facts: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, EMTs are now the worst-paid workers in health care,¹ making 30% less than other Americans and facing salaries as low as $37,000. In the past managers found EMTs could work diligently up the ladder until they made it to another part of the agency. Now, however, an entry-level EMS position is far less lucrative. Add in exhaustion and everything else, and you have an industry facing 100% turnover every half decade.²

The result? Inexperienced public safety responders are left to care for patients and victims. Hiring problems impact the ability of first responders to arrive at scenes quickly. And when they get there, their skills and experience are curtailed by a lack of time on the job. There are no winners in these scenarios, and in fact they can be highly dangerous.

American Ambulance Association President Shawn Baird said it like this in an NBC interview: “When you take a system that was already fragile and stretched it because you didn’t have enough people entering the field, then you throw in a public health emergency and all the additional burdens it put on our workforce, as well as the labor shortages across the entire economy, and it really has put us in a crisis mode”³

What’s needed to fix this problem? Quite simply, new innovations in public safety software and cloud-native software solutions may help turn turnover into a thing of the past. Let’s explore how.

Assigning First Responders

EMS systems must balance limited supplies of resources with demand that may exceed them. You can triage patients and triage calls, but it’s an inexact science, and errors can have grave consequences. This calculus is messy and dangerous and frightening. It’s even worse with manual processes and outdated systems.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Traditional CompStat systems popularized in the 1970s and still prevalent across many public safety organizations use statistical data that’s likely outdated in emergency situations. By expanding your data-analysis capabilities, you can predict trouble spots and schedule responders more effectively. Further, data doesn’t become stale—it’s instantly updated.

New cloud-based systems can take in data and make it available to scheduling supervisors instantly. Instead of waiting for a processor to handle and upload data to a server, you can enter data right into the cloud-based service, which assesses trends and statistics in real time. Instead of hoping a neighborhood’s demand stays the same, you can react with actual situational awareness.

With cloud-native public safety software solutions, you can see data as it changes, on an hourly basis. Every call is processed in real time. The next time you schedule crews, you won’t have to perform a juggling act that could put your constituents in danger.

Think Flexibly

Speed used to be measured in miles per hour, but now it’s measured in megabits per second. New cloud-native tools help supervisors understand and prepare for staffing shortages, thereby reducing the gaps in response time and intelligence caused by outdated tech.

Most current first responder technology is rigid and nonconfigurable. This means when changing forces act upon an agency, be it a drought or pandemic or even regular changes to a city, the software cannot change with it. The goal, then, is to use cloud-based tech to reduce the strain on an agency and optimize the staff you have.

Further, this empowers an agency to grow with its updated technology and change its policies instantly. When you’re bogged down with old technology, you cannot think flexibly, and, more important, you can’t anticipate or control staffing issues because you can’t see the results in real time.

Imagine another scenario: A crew is out on a call. You know where they are and why, and when one of their laptops shuts down in the field, you can reset it remotely and refresh it instantly with the latest data. And because you’re staffed properly, your crews don’t have to think twice about doing the right thing for every patient every time.

Software won’t make hiring any easier—or maybe it will. When the work is smoother and more flexible, stress levels go down, staff is happier, and you end up controlling problems rather than simply reacting to them.

It’s a new way of thinking about agency management, and it’s high time we started thinking holistically about all the vital problems facing our first responders today.

References

1. Buchman C, Kernstine K. Low pay, high stress lead to EMT shortage across country. WHNT News 19. Published June 14, 2022. Accessed August 18, 2022. whnt.com/news/low-pay-high-stress-lead-to-emt-shortage-across-country/

2. Weixel N. Ambulance, EMT first responders face ‘crippling workforce shortage’. The Hill. Published October 27, 2021. Accessed August 18, 2022. https://thehill.com/regulation/labor/577879-ambulance-emt-first-responders-face-crippling-workforce-shortage/

3. McCausland P. EMS services warn of ‘crippling labor shortage’ undermining 911 system. NBC News. Published October 8, 2021. Accessed August 18, 2022. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ems-services-warn-crippling-labor-shortage-undermining-911-system-rcna2677

Nick Stohlman is founder and chief client officer at SOMA Global, a Florida-based provider of public safety solutions.