Residents question EMS hours, service

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

Is the Vernon County Ambulance Service a 24-hour a day service or not? That's the question two members of the community asked the ambulance board at its regular meeting Thursday night.

Linda Dorsey and Bob Hacker questioned the board about the service provided by the district. Both questioned the board about transfers between hospitals and why there aren't always ambulances available to take someone to another hospital.

"I have an issue. As a community -- when we call you and you come, we're grateful but it's when we call you and you don't come -- that's the problem," Dorsey said. "In my case we tried for a long time to get an ambulance to transfer my mother to another hospital before they finally sent a helicopter."

Board vice chairman Larry Spillars apologized to Dorsey for the incident and let Ambulance Director James McKenzie explain what process the district went through to get a crew to transfer someone between hospitals.

McKenzie also apologized and explained that transfers between hospitals were of a different priority than maintaining availability in case of emergency. "We do have 24/7 protection but we won't leave the community unprotected to do an out-of-town transfer," McKenzie said. "There is a crew here 24 hours a day but they need to be available in case there is an emergency that requires their presence."

The district has a procedure to call in a crew when the crew on duty is called away to an emergency but sometimes there are problems getting a second crew, especially for non-emergency transfers.

"We are short some people right now and sometimes it just isn't possible to spare a crew to go out of town," McKenzie said. "The day of the incident we had two off for medical reasons, two were out of town and one is deployed in Iraq."

Dorsey said she appreciated the situation but said she thought Nevada needed more service. "As a community we need to know if we have an ambulance 24 hours or not. As a large community I feel we have the right to have the service."

Hacker echoed Dorsey's sentiments and expressed his own displeasure with the ambulance service. "We pay taxes and I thought that was to pay for this service. Even though I pay the taxes I still have to pay if I need the ambulance to take me to Joplin. That's not so bad but when I needed to be transferred I had to be flown by helicopter because there wasn't any driver available."

McKenzie again explained that because of a shortage of trained personnel having a crew available for emergency calls was a higher priority than transferring someone to another hospital. "We have to have someone here to go out on emergency calls. The days of funeral homes and others providing the service are long gone. The rules the state has for us require a certain amount of training and we have to follow those rules. We are trying to get people to come here and we've spent thousands of dollars advertising for people."

Board member Jimmy Greer explained that there was a state-wide, if not nation-wide, shortage of paramedics. "Paramedics require a lot more training, two years, and trying to attract paramedics to a rural area is very difficult. The total number of paramedics graduated in the state of Missouri last year was 75. That's for the entire state. Most of those will go to work in hospitals and in the larger cities so that leaves very few available to work in places like Vernon County."

Spillars explained that the board had been working for sometime to try to alleviate the problem and had taken some unusual steps. "We have a young man in college, we are paying his tuition and he'll come back and work with us for several years. We're growing our own."

He also invited Dorsey and Hacker back to future meetings. "Every board meeting we discuss this and try to make it better. Come back next month and see for yourself," Greer said.