Abstract

Introduction: Lee County, Florida, has 108 golf courses. Snowbird season packs the golf courses with many who are older. Medical emergencies: stroke; cardiac arrest; fractures; back injuries; stings; and heat exhaustion are common. Access to patients on golf courses is challenging. Golfers can only see the lanais and back of houses—not street addresses.

Objective: To design a Graphic Information System (GIS) and Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) solution to identify patient locations using common place names and verified addresses.

Method: GIS produced maps of all 108 courses were labeled with possible access points to every hole, tee, fairway or green. This process took over 800 hours. Site access verification was completed by Medics and Firefighters who physically inspected for unimpeded access through the back yard of the given address. The matrix of over 8000 coordinates was entered into CAD as a common place database. The Emergency Medical Dispatcher (EMD) can verify the 911 XY coordinates and location, then enter the common place name and be given the corresponding street address that would be utilized for Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) route mapping for the responders. For example, "Eagle Ridge 10 fairway" corresponds to 7627 Eaglet Ct. CAD comments are "on the golf course behind address."

Results: Getting the 911 call into our system with actual geographical location of the patient allows us to use the database identifying the physical address closest to the incident and quickly route the closest units using AVL technology. All golf courses were contacted seeking their participation by displaying provided posters and asked to encourage golfers if they have an emergency on the course— dial 911 on a cell phone. Do not call the club house. Calling the club only delays critical response time.

Conclusion: We have been successfully deploying this system since October 2014 for golf courses and are considering implementation for waterways and beach locations.