COUNTY EMS SYSTEM SET TO EXPAND

Mike McCagg

ccSCOOP News

06-07-10 - 10:10 a.m. - Two months after launching, Columbia County's fledgling countywide EMS program is set to expand. Two more rescue squads are joining the countywide service, leaving just Chatham Rescue and the soon-to-be-defunct Lebanon Valley Protective Association (LVPA) ambulance squad as the only emergency medical providers in the county not to be a part of the service.

The program which is designed to reduce response times to medical emergencies in the county was launched on April 1 with Greenport and Valatie rescue squads taking part, along with Northern Dutchess Paramedics. The latter covers all or parts of the towns of Germantown, Clermont, Livingston, Taghkanic, Gallatin, and Ancram. County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Coordinator P. J. Keeler told ccSCOOP that the response to the program has been great and that after witnessing it in action, Philmont Rescue and Copake-based Community Rescue Squad want to opt in.

The countywide EMS system is the first of its kind in the state and relaxes "archaic" regulations that currently forbid EMS providers from standing by in each other's districts. Through Columbia County's system, county 911 center dispatchers are able to relocate ambulance crews from participating squads to areas of need. Previously, only a rescue squad member could request mutual aid coverage from another agency and that coverage could only be provided from the edge of a district.

Having EMS personnel at the ready in a central part of a rescue squad district is vital since, according to national emergency medical experts, cardiac arrest patients who do not receive defibrillation within eight minutes of a heart attack are almost certain not to survive.

"It's hard to say what it would have been had we not had our program in place, but our estimates are that we have reduced responses by greater than 50 percent," Keeler said. "Our goal with CC EMS is to put an ambulance on the scene of a significant medical emergency in nine minutes or less. During the first month, we did that 100 percent of the time."

"The first day of the program, April 1, we had a successful response to a serious motor vehicle versus motorcycle accident [in Old Chatham]." Keeler continued. "We had a substantially reduced response time because we had relocated an ambulance to Chatham instead of having one sit on a [district] line."

While Chatham is not participating in the program, crews can be relocated to cover calls in its district. By not participating, all Chatham is doing is not allowing its own ambulance crews to be relocated to another district.

Overall, Keeler said that during the first month, 911 dispatchers relocated 162 ambulance crews through the program, and of those, 17 resulted in relocated crews handling emergency medical calls.

The EMS coordinator said that requests from Community and Philmont rescue squads to join the program have been filed with the New York State Department of Health “which oversees emergency medical operations statewide“ and the two agencies could be operating with the county system "very soon."

Reached for comment on Tuesday, Chatham Rescue officials said they have asked their attorney to review whether the squad could ask to be a part of the countywide system. "We have discussed it and it's in the hands of our attorney," said Sara Johnson, Chatham Rescue's administrator. "If it's deemed legal for us to join, then our board of directors will consider it."

The county is funding the new program with a budget line item of approximately $250,000 to be used to pay the rescue squads the full cost of responding to any emergency calls they answer when they have been relocated to other districts. The cost, said Keeler, is far less than the cost to the individual town taxpayers incurred if the rescue squads had to add additional crew or paramedics to meet the rising demands placed on emergency medical providers. Keeler said he is not worried that in these tough fiscal times the item may be cut from the county budget. "By using existing resources, we have been able to increase the service we provide in a means that is far less expensive for the county to do it than if each individual agency were to do it and seek the additional funding from their respective towns," said Keeler.