The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office will soon take over dispatch services for King’s Daughters Medical Center’s Emergency Medical Service, a move that could reduce response times.

Currently, when LCSO receives a 911 call that requires medical attention, the call is transferred to KDMC. LCSO Dispatch Supervisor Vicki Magee said that if the call is from the county they still page first responders in the area. Once the call is transferred to KDMC, Lincoln County dispatchers are done with the call.

When the office takes over dispatch calls for KDMC, dispatchers will stay on the line with callers while simultaneously paging KDMC to the address the person is calling from.

“I personally see response times going down because of this,” Magee said. With the change, callers will not have to repeat information to KDMC after describing the situation to LSCO dispatchers, she said.

The sheriff’s office currently provides dispatch services to the fire department. Both Magee and Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing said the change will benefit the community by reducing response times as the service did for the fire department.

Rushing said his office has been in discussion with KDMC and county supervisors about the change for about a year. He said the request was not too much since dispatchers only needed one more level of certification.

There are three levels of certification dispatchers must complete within the Mississippi Department of Public Safety Standards and Training: the first is fire, second is law and the final level is emergency medical dispatch. Rushing said the lack of the last level of certification was the only reason the sheriff’s office didn’t dispatch before.

To receive certification, Magee said the office’s 11 dispatchers, full-time and part-time, had to go through 32 hours of training – 24 hours of classroom training and eight hours field training completed during a ride-along with KDMC EMS responders.

“There are so many years of experience here, I believe they can handle it,” Rushing said about the dispatchers who work in the office. Magee has 13.5 years. “They already have a step up.”

To accommodate the change the sheriff’s office added two more dispatch positions. The additions will allow the office to have at least two dispatchers on hand 24 hours a day.

Rushing said he hopes his office can completely assume dispatch duties for KDMC’s EMS in the next three weeks.