Our local heroes depend on a couple frequencies to get the message through when they are responding from the scene to the hospital. If you watched TV during the seventies you may have remembered the hit show "Emergency". Squad 51 this is Rampart; Minus the sideburns not much has changed in 30 years! Ambulances still report their patient's condition and ask for permission to administer meds via radio. The warbling noises heard were the ECG (Electrocardiogram) 12 lead transmissions, those classic sounds can still be heard on the Sullivan County Trunked system.

Some hospitals block all transmissions on their radios unless a specific DTMF tone is received. DTMF tones are the sounds you hear after pressing numerical buttons on a telephone in-call. Now since many of the agencies around here don’t radios with the telephone looking keypads they cannot "encode" into the hospital channel. The solution adopted by the Johnson City Medical Center is to have a designated dispatcher monitor a frequency, listen to traffic, then open the squelch on the hospitals radio by transmitting the appropriate DTMF tone sequence. "Johnson City MEDCOM" operates on 155.205, and is sometimes referred to as "MEDCOM 205". They conduct a weekly radio check on Monday mornings starting at 9:00 AM. If you're listening to 155.205 and hear a unit ask to be encoded, immediately switch to 155.340, you will be able to follow the conversation. However, sometimes the report may be relayed via the 155.205 frequency.

Johnson City Medcom benefits from two remote based receivers, these radios listen for traffic on 155.205 and 155.340 and retransmit anything heard on a UHF frequency. Listening to these can be useful if you live far away enough to not be able to hear the ambulances calling in their report.

The FCC previously set aside designated channels for medical use referred to as medcom. These frequency pairs are used nationwide but may sometimes be shared with secondary users such as business or public safety. Medlfight uses MED9 for flight following and patient condition reports back to their base at Wellmont’s hospital in Bristol, VA (BRMC). If you live too far away to hear the repeater you can listen to the repeater's input frequency, that way you can be sure you don’t miss any of the transmission.

Since a lot of hospitals monitor 155.340 for reports they sometimes use the CTCSS squelch (Tone) on their radio. Many of the hospitals rely on a remote base placed a strategic location like atop a mountain to facilitate the communications link in rugged terrain. Most hospitals simultaneously listen to an alternate channel; these would be used in disasters or in the even of equipment failure on the 155.340 frequency.