Communications
Communications Supervisor
Delores Dalton has worked for SEOEMS since 1991. She started her career as a dispatcher, but has worked in many other posiitons including Interim Station Chief, EMT, Paramedic, APCO instructor, Duty Officer and recently became an AHA CPR instructor.
Duties
The Communications Supervisor is responsible for the operations of the Communication Center, scheduling of dispatchers, maintaining tower site leases and contracts, renewing radio licenses, and all paperwork for the efficient operations of the dispatch center. The Communications Supervisor must be knowledgeable of Federal Communication rules and regulations and is responsible for repairs of all radio equipment through the radio vendor.
Communications Department
The SEOEMS Communication System links the 1,350 square miles it covers through a fail safe state of art new microwave radio network. This complex radio system communicates effectively throughout the hills of Southeast Ohio allowing wide-area paging of key personnel, constant squad contact with dispatch personnel, and effective communications with medical control. Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMDs)operate from one communications center and receive calls from the participating counties on 911 transfer lines. The SEOEMS dispatcher receives transferred emergency calls and screen information from the county 911 center. All Dispatchers are required to have either Emergency Medical Dispatch Certification, or the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) 40hr Telecommunicator Course. These dispatch courses are nationally recognized. Along with this training the trainee will do 80+ hours of observation in the Dispatch Center and will be required to take a test on area coverage. Upon successful completion of the classroom and apprenticeship segments of the course, trainees are eligible for hire as part-time EMD's and are utilized to cover open dispatch shifts.
State of the art communications equipment in the SEOEMS dispatch center allows the EMD to efficiently dispatch squads to emergency runs. A twenty-four channel voice logger recorder records all radio, telephone traffic 24 hours a day for documentation The EMDS have instant access to the last 45 minutes of emergency calls recorded by means of a call check recorder. The Motorola Centracom II radio console controls six base stations, located at each of the SEOEMS tower sites. Paging is accomplished by the built-in encoder, and the EMD can set up a telephone/radio patch to any tower site with this equipment. SEOEMS also has as a backup auxiliary dispatch site, located at the Gallia Tower Site. This site was established in the event the main dispatch center at Headquarters would have to be evacuated. With the flip of a switch the dispatcher can transfer all radio traffic to the tower site across the road, behind Holer Medical Center.
Microwave Radio Equipment
SEOEMS owns a 2.4 million dollar microwave system . This is a complete digital microwave system. It is capable of carrying 288 voice channels. We also received an additional "hop" of microwave from Headquarters to the Gallia tower site to replace the aging underground telephone cables that connected HQ to the microwave system. This new system gives SEOEMS the ability to bring in phone lines from participating counties. This gives residents we serve a local number to conduct business with HQ, and saves SEOEMS in long distance charges to and from stations, vendors, and county courthouses.
Other possible future uses of the digital microwave system could also include transmission of data between headquarters and SEOEMS stations, and perhaps video teleconferencing for training purposes using the high speed data cards built into the microwave network. The Network Manager monitors all functions of the microwave network, alerting the dispatcher whenever there is a problem with any aspect of the microwave system. It also monitors external functions, such as door open alarms, heating and cooling systems, and tower light outages.