The Communications Division consists of two subdivisions.  The East Baton Rouge Parish Communications District and Telecommunications.  The Communications Division has 42 employees with a single division head functioning under the Administrator of the Department of  Emergency Medical Services.

The Communications District is charged with administering all aspects of 9-1-1 which includes financial matters, answering of all incoming 9-1-1 calls, and purchasing and maintaining all 9-1-1 equipment for three primary public safety answering points or, (PSAP’s).  The 9-1-1 Division answers over 900 calls to 9-1-1 daily and provides radio dispatch and complaint taking services for EMS.  This includes taking information and providing pre-arrival first aid instructions to callers, as well as radio dispatch services for approximately 100 EMS calls per day.                                                 

All 9-1-1 operators are Association of Public Safety Communications Officials International (APCO) certified basic telecommunicators and National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) certified Basic EMT’s.  All 9-1-1 supervisors are APCO certified Communications Center Supervisors and  all training officer are certified as APCO Communications Center Training Officers

Telecommunications is responsible for the city/Parish full service radio shop providing repair services for pagers, radios, global positioning units, emergency flashers on vehicles and disaster warning sirens.  Telecommunications is also responsible for the operation and maintenance of both the 800 MHz radio system and the Parish paging system as well as the Parish Centrex telephone system.  

In November of 2001 EMS moved into a new Communications center.  The ATM-EOC Facility houses  9-1-1 operations, and as well as EMS, Fire and Police dispatch. The facility is the home for the East Baton Rouge Parish Advanced Traffic Management operations as well as some  State DOTD offices.  The Department of Emergency Preparedness is located on the second floor and the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for East Baton Rouge overlooks the dispatch center.  The EMS employees work in a combined communications center atmosphere with Fire, Police and advanced traffic management operations carried out in the same room.   This new facility is truly a state of the art communications center built with the future in mind.