By: Lydia Crawley
The Parsons Advocate
Tucker County Ambulance Authority met in regular session at the Five Rivers Public Library. The board received various updates and addressed outreach and financial opportunities.
Board President Dennis Filler updated the board on the perception the entity has in the Tucker County community. “Anytime I am out in the community,” Filler said, “I obviously get approached by a lot of folks and the community reception is very positive. So, kudos to EMS staff and squads because you are doing the right thing and presenting yourself in such a way that the community understands that you are there as their EMS. And there is less of an us-them thing.”
Filler did tell the board of an interaction he had with a member of the public in the Davis-Thomas area. “I did have an interaction up on the mountain last Friday,” Filler said, “and there is still some of the old perceptions that, you know, we are hiding money, those kinds of nonsense or we’re not providing a level of service. But its obviously some folks that are still talking in the small community groups and they are really not looking because I think we’re doing everything we can to get the word out there about what is we’re doing.”
Filler said that the effort the group has placed into community outreach is working. “All the efforts that are happening with community outreach are paying off,” Filler said. “The only thing I continue to ask the staff is, remember we’re always in the community’s eye and you guys should know what the norms are, follow those norms and keep it up because it’s working. We’re getting good, positive feedback from throughout the community. There are still hot spots and will continue to work those, but overall, it has dramatically improved from what it was six, eight months ago.”
Interim Director Amanda Simmons presented an operations report to the board. “Let’s go with this first, the crews have been phenomenal,” Simmons said, “working overtime, extra, going to events, doing transports for us. It doesn’t matter how many transports they’ve done in a day. You got another one? We need to do it, lets go. To make money, they’ve been pushing through. My gosh, its been phenomenal. “
Simmons also said that upgrades have been made. “We’ve been able to upgrade some of the supplies that we have,” Simmons said, “operational wise in the trucks that can help. One of those is bags. We’ve tried multiple bags, we’ve had some issues with that. We got one coming this week to try out. Its a really nice set up…we are going to try two, one in each station just so we can get a feel for everything.”
Simmons also informed the board of a new chair system that EMS could benefit from. “Stryker has been phenomenal,” Simmons said. “They did show us a stair chair today. That’s one of the upgrades that we are looking at is a stair chair in some form or nature. That is something that we do feel is desperately needed if we did have an issue. Here this last month we were not able to get lift assistance. That is something that we are looking at in the near future on trying to achieve.”
Simmons went on to explain to the board how the stair chair works. “What we do is if we have someone – we have one individual in particular who lives on a set of stairs that go straight up outside,” Simmons said. “So what we do is, we take them out of the rig. Let’s say they are coming down. Let’s say that they get a 911 call. We place them on this chair – it kind of looks like a wheelchair – we strap them in and then the device has a set of tracks.”
Simmons also explained the existing system that EMS has for their current stair chair. “Unfortunately, unless you have a partner that’s got enough build to them or you yourself are able to,” Simmons said, “unless you have two individuals that can actually do said stair chair, its very difficult to get said patient up and down because there is no electronics to it right now in fact the one that I brought with me to the library the other day, didn’t even have a set of tracks on it, that’s how old it is. It has four tires.”
Simmons described the upgrades the new equipment had. “With Stryker right now, with the new mechanisms,” Simmons said, “we can put a 350-pound individual on and a little woman can take them up and down the stairs by themselves without the assistance of fire or another individual. The new ones have electronics on them. They have a little battery pack. And its amazing, you push a button and it pulls them up the stairs and it glides them down. It has traction to it.”
Simmons told the board that the stair chair would be a vital piece of safety equipment for patients and staff. “So that is something that we are looking at not just for the safety of the patients, but worker comp claims will go way down because of the back injuries,” Simmons said. “We are looking at 18 to 19 grand for one stair chair, but can I tell you it’s worth two workers comp claims or pulling the person out completely with one fall.”
Simmons also informed the board that EMS received notification that the authority qualified for reimbursement from the Employee Retention Credit. This credit is awarded through a federal Covid relief program. Simmons said that all forms have been signed and they will be receiving money, but it remains a matter of when. A total of $270,000 from six increments is expected to be received over several months with the first check in four to 10 months. The program covers payroll expenses from March of 2020 to December of 2021.