How a team is handling high-frequency 911 callers, getting them the help they need

It starts with just three numbers and those calls are coming in from across the county, but about 10% of all emergency calls come from just one category of people.

“We class it as anybody who calls multiple times in a week, month or year,” said Lt. Chad Hirosky with Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire.

They are “high utilizes,” and their calls could be hundreds of 911 calls a year or even dozens in a few weeks.

“Everyone is looking for a lifeline and a lot of times, they just don’t have anywhere to turn,” said Scott Story, a master firefighter.

Those calls are what drive this team of nine firefighters and a social worker from the City’s Office of Community Health and Safety as they hit the streets to answer the question of why.

“Our goal is never to stop the 911 call. It’s always to fix the driver of that 911 call,” Hirosky said.

While the high utilizer program studies the data, cases may come directly from the agencies working the calls.

“The system is built to handle these quick reactionary problems. Take you to the hospital, take you to jail, put your house out, whatever the case may be. It was never built into the system to have long-term case work,” Hirosky said.

Once a week, a team of two firefighters partner up with a social worker and tackle upwards of 20 cases; no two are the same and the list of people in need is long.

Non-emergency falls are the ground floor driver for this team. Hirosky said the callers for that specific call are typically in need of more than just a lift assist.

“The system only sees that as a nuisance call and it’s really not because he really truly is in distress, but it’s not a distress 911 can help,” Hirosky said.

“That’s where the social workers come into that, they have the ability to open their toolbox of things,” Story said.

They bridge the gap, whether it’s connecting a caller with a therapist or food bank or even helping with insurance issues.

“I’m the person people can reach out to kind of connect them to another agency so that boundary or blockage isn’t there anymore,” said Kaila Venezia, who’s a Community Social Worker for the city.

The data doesn’t lie as overall calls for non-emergency falls are down 14%. Plus each individual person’s call frequency improves after the program steps in.

“Same call reoccurrence is reduced about 90% for us, meaning if someone calls 911 multiple times, once our interaction happens, we are going to reduce their call volume by 90%,” Hirosky said.

While the team is small, the dream is big to make a change in a community seeking support.

“If I could wave a magic wand, I’d have five days a week, two units a day, that’s a minimum to start to really put a dent into this,” Hirosky said. “We are just taking the cream off the top.”

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