It's been 30 days since the Springfield Fire Department made a major change to save money.
Firefighters are responding to fewer calls, but officials say they're actually serving the community more effectively.
It may sound like an oxymoron but less is more in this case.
The fire department had two options to try to reduce spending- add fees to medical calls or cut some of those calls.
A month ago it went with the latter and officials say the results suggest they made the right decision.
A third of the time, you’ll see firefighters fighting fires.
But two thirds of the time, you’ll see them acting as first responders.
At least that was the case until recently.
“What we looked at is how do we reduce the number of calls and still go to all the calls that are potentially life threatening?” says Assistant Fire Chief David Hall.
So the fire department identified ten types of calls they'll always respond to including gunshot wounds, uncontrolled bleeding, and unconsciousness.
That dropped its medical call volume by 30% and exceeded expectations.
“We hoped we could cut between 20-25%.”
Hall says where they really notice a difference is when it comes to response times.
It used to be when a medical call came through 911 it would go from dispatch to the ambulance which would then decide if the fire department was needed.
Next it would go back to dispatch and finally to the fire department itself.
The average response time was 2 minutes, 23 seconds.
Now the fire department is automatically dispatched when the caller is exhibiting one of 10 key symptoms.
That's reduced the response time to 1 minute, 29 seconds.
Hall further explains, “We’ve cut our processing time by 31%."
The overall goal is a savings of $100,000 a year.
So far statistics suggest the department's on fire.
The fire department will reevaluate in 90 days and then again in 1 year.
Hall says this has also been beneficial from a training perspective- fewer unnecessary calls means more time to train.