Increasing the Efficiency of a Brazilian Emergency Response Call Center

This paper presents solutions to increase efficiency and reduce response times at an Emergency Call Center in the southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. Utilizing macro-ergonomic design (1), personal staff interviews and questionnaires served to illuminate the major shortcomings of the call center's operating system. Solutions are proposed to the two identified critical issues with the system. To address the high volume of prank calls, a multi-faceted warning campaign targeted at school-age children is proposed. To address the high workload of the medic, a detailed task analysis is created and follow-up proposed task reallocation strategies are modeled through an Arena simulation.