Would Haymarket overwhelm Itasca's 1 ambulance? Expert says no, group remains skeptical
In its renewed push to open an addiction treatment facility in Itasca, Haymarket Center hired a new expert with a long list of credentials to analyze whether it would place a burden on police and the village's fire protection district.
His conclusion? Itasca's fire district would have the capacity to cover the most critical emergency calls from the treatment center.
But the findings did little to quell skepticism from an opposition group and a fire district attorney, who questioned the methodology behind the projections.
Ambulance use has dominated much of the public debate around the proposal to turn a former Holiday Inn into a 240-bed center for people with substance-use disorders.
The issue consumed a three-hour public hearing Wednesday when former Wilmette Fire Chief James Dominik gave testimony on his report for Haymarket.
The Itasca Fire Protection District has one ambulance. Haymarket leaders say they have a contract with the state's second-largest private ambulance provider to handle most calls.
Elite Ambulance would absorb basic life support calls, while Dominik recommended Itasca's ambulance should respond to the advanced life support, or more life-threatening, calls.
As a result, the proposed treatment center would require 18 to 26 fire and EMS calls to Itasca each year, according to his analysis. The district on average responds to 1,636 calls per year - the second-lowest volume out of a dozen area departments.
"Really, there is no adverse impact based on my findings from this study," Dominik said. "I feel that Itasca, both the police and the fire protection district, can clearly handle this without any additional resources."
Dominik based his analysis on calls generated by 11 treatment facilities and recovery homes that "provide similar licensed services to those proposed for Haymarket DuPage."
However, opponents said the comparable facilities in Dominik's report have a total of 237 beds, or three less than the 240 proposed in Itasca, a community of 8,700 people.
"That gives you a scope of what's being presented in one of DuPage's smallest villages," said James Diestel, a member of the Concerned Citizens of Itasca group.
Opponents also question why the study didn't use Haymarket's headquarters in Chicago's West Loop as a basis for comparison.
"When establishing an impact, the data is only as good as the (comparables) used," Diestel said. "Haymarket seemed to purposely stay away from an almost identical facility they have in the West Loop and concentrated on 11 facilities, seven of which don't have treatment beds, to establish the impact on Itasca's emergency services."
Dominik said he initially planned to use Haymarket Chicago as a comparable site. But dispatch data acquired from the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications were flawed and unreliable, he said.
For instance, the data didn't eliminate duplicate calls for the same incident, Dominik wrote in his 120-page report. Two different dispatchers may characterize the same call differently, resulting in "many inconsistencies" when analyzing the data, he wrote.
Village plan commissioners also asked if Haymarket Chicago keeps internal records of EMS calls.
"The only record they have is contained inside each patient care report," Dominik said. "There's no centralized database for how many people came in, how many people went to the hospital or needed emergency transport or treatment."
Haymarket officials have said the larger Chicago center has a different patient population than the one planned in Itasca. In many cases, the patients in the city are homeless, have not had access to health care for decades and tend to arrive with multiple medical conditions.
Haymarket leaders said they would supplement Elite Ambulance coverage by hiring more private ambulance companies if needed.
Dominik is expected to continue giving testimony when the public hearing on Haymarket's proposal resumes Wednesday.
Treatment: Public hearing resumes Wednesday