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COLUMBUS, Ga. — Residents of the Columbus area have been abusing the city’s ambulance service, according to recent audit findings presented to city council on July 25.

Requesting an ambulance knowing it is not reasonably needed is a punishable crime under Georgia Code § 16-10-29 (2022).

Internal Auditor Donna McGinnis delivered the news to officials with Fire & EMS Chief Salvatore Scarpa, who also provided valuable insight on how severely the issue has grown to impact the department’s operations.

According to McGinnis, a growing number of residents have become ‘routine callers’ of the city’s 911 service, providing frivolous reasons for why they need an ambulance sent to their location. Some of those reasons have included, according to McGinnis, things like running out of cigarettes and beer.

By law, if the caller says they require medical assistance, the ambulances must respond anyway. The city’s EMS first responders then load the ‘patient’ into the city’s scarce medical vehicles and transport them to a local area hospital’s emergency room.

Effectively, these abusive ‘routine callers’ have turned the city’s ambulance service into a taxicab operation.

Collections Supervisor Allen Young who participated in the city audit that revealed the abuse also provided comment during the presentation, sharing the rather high frequency of the abusive calls:

“I would say that we approximately get about ten or fifteen of these types of calls a month,” Young said to council. 

While that might not seem like a lot to some, that’s roughly three man-hours of the city’s extremely-limited emergency medical resources robbed from the public per call, which is happening once every other day. It is not uncommon for the city’s ambulances to all be out on calls at the same time, leaving none to answer new calls when they come in. By allowing the abuse to continue, real-world medical emergencies cannot be tended to in a timely manner leaving actual patients without the services they really need.

The city’s Chief of Fire & EMS Salvatore Scarpa provided further comment on how the issue has grown, citing how statistical increases in the department’s overall EMS call volume is already placing strain on their ability to respond:

“Our EMS call volume went up 16% compared to this quarter last year. That’s significant, considering that we run about 38,000 calls for EMS a year. These numbers are probably not going to go down in the foreseeable future,” Scarpa said to city council. 

Internal Auditor Donna McGinnis suggested that the city consider implementing a ‘cry wolf’ policy to combat the abuse, using a system of either citations or fines to disincentivize the ‘routine callers’ from bogging down the city’s emergency services with their frivolous calls.

According to McGinnis, that policy could include a plan to not cite the first offense, charge a hypothetical $100 fine for the second, and perhaps an increased $200 or $300 fine for the third.

McGinnis emphasized that a similar policy implemented by the Columbus Police Department has quantifiably shown a significant reduction of false alarm calls, freeing up police resources for the city’s actual emergencies.

City councilors were very impressed with the findings and appeared open to exploring the concept further in the immediate future. However, several councilors raised valid concerns of the abusers’ ability to actually pay the fines if they were issued, noting that those who are abusing the system largely would not have the resources available for the city to collect. As a result, those ‘routine callers’ would likely not be discouraged from continuing their patterns of bogus calls since they know the city would not be able to take what they don’t have in the first place.

It is not clear as to why city councilors have not suggested the enforcement of state law under Georgia Code § 16-10-29 (2022), which names the exact scenario as a misdemeanor; repeat offenses would be punishable by jail time.

If you can’t take their money, take their time. Perhaps we ought to just follow the law.

Stay with the Muckraker as we continue to provide coverage on this issue and others like it in the weeks and months ahead.

Facts are stubborn things — and we’ll keep publishing them, whether city officials like them or not.

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