After missing a deadline this week to transfer responsibility for medical 911 calls back to the Richmond Ambulance Authority, Mayor Danny Avula’s administration now says the switch should occur in late July.

In a memo sent to the City Council Wednesday, Avula Chief of Staff Lawson Wijesooriya said the transfer should occur by the end of the month.

“We will complete the transition no later than July 27 unless City Council authorizes additional implementation time,” Wijesooriya wrote in the memo.

The timing had become a sticking point between the Avula administration and the Council, which voted on June 8 to have RAA be the main point of contact for medical calls instead of having them routed through the city’s own emergency call center. 

The Council’s ordinance took effect 30 days after its passage, which made July 8 the date that — according to technical specifics of the city code — RAA was supposed to start taking the calls. 

The external authority handled medical calls prior to 2024, when the city government took over that function itself with the goal of streamlining the process and speeding up response times. The ambulance authority later told the Council that the push for speed was causing accuracy to suffer, because information RAA was getting from the city’s call center often didn’t match what first responders would find after arriving at a scene. 

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The RichmonderSarah Vogelsong

In many cases, the ambulance authority said, responders found more serious emergencies than what was initially relayed by the city’s phone operators.

Those concerns inspired the Council’s vote to give RAA back the power to directly interact with 911 callers earlier in the process, but uncertainty has lingered over when and how that switch will happen.

On Monday, Wijesooriya said the city’s Department of Emergency Communications was working on a memorandum of understanding with RAA laying out how the transition would occur. That document would also need to be approved by the Council, Wijesooriya said, possibly in September.

Several Council members indicated they felt that was an unacceptably slow timeline for the administration to implement a Council-approved policy.

The City Council ordered a change to medical 911 calls in 30 days. The Avula administration wants more time to prep

“I feel like the spirit of the conversation was knowing we would need to take some steps for proper implementation.”

The RichmonderGraham Moomaw

The Avula administration told Council members last month that the 30-day timeline might be tough to achieve given the public safety implications of the 911 system. At the June meeting, Council members seemed generally on board with the idea there could be some flexibility with the implementation timeline to ensure a smooth transition versus rushing to meet a particular date.

In the latest memo, the administration walked back the notion that the city and RAA would need a signed document in place before the transfer could occur. Wijesooriya’s memo said that even though the administration believes having a formal agreement in place would help, it would no longer treat that as a legal impediment to enacting the policy chosen by the Council.

“The administration remains committed to carrying out Council’s adopted ordinance while ensuring that any transition of emergency medical dispatch responsibilities are implemented in a manner that protects continuity of service, supports emergency response and prioritizes the safety of residents,” Wijesooriya wrote.

Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org