Eastside Fire and Rescue will no longer be sending out fire trucks to every medical call.

A new program will keep a medical technician 12 hours a day to handle non-emergency medical problems, which make up a tenth of EFR’s call volume.

The move would free up fire crews to focus on heart attacks and house fires, said Greg Tryon, EFR’s deputy chief of operations.

As it is now, if firefighters respond to a non-emergency call and an emergency call comes in, they have decide whether to split the team or leave the patient. Under the new program, the Community Medical Technician would have responded to the first call.

The program also will reduce wear and tear on expensive aid cars and fire engines, providing a cost incentive. The CMTs use an SUV truck.

King County Public Health put forward $243,000 a year to pay for the one-year pilot program, plus money for new equipment. The University of Washington also has an interest. It’s studying the CMT program as well as something similar in Woodinville.

It won’t require EFR to hire any new staff, and will draw from about 60 firefighters who volunteered for the program.

The program is based at EFR’s headquarters in Issaquah on Newport Way. The CMT would respond to calls within a 15 minute drive from that location. It would include Issaquah, most of Sammamish and parts of North Bend.

The types of calls CMTs would take are geared more toward social service needs. A technician might respond to a drunk who needs help sobering up. If an elderly man falls, isn’t injured but needs help getting up, a technician would respond and then maybe see if there was a community service that could help prevent future falls.

“The purpose is to create a more efficient emergency response system by sending right people to the right call,” Tryon said.