Wenatchee mayor’s plan calls for the layoffs of eight firefighters by Aug. 1.

 

June 01–WENATCHEE — When an elderly woman activated a medical-alert alarm in her Wenatchee home on Thursday, two medics in an ambulance and four firefighters in a fire truck arrived to help. They worked together to treat the woman, get her onto a gurney and wheeled out to the ambulance for a trip to the hospital.

That type of team response would change under Mayor Frank Kuntz’s plan to layoff eight firefighters by Aug. 1. The city’s two private ambulance companies would handle many non-life-threatening emergency medical calls alone.

Critics of the mayor’s proposal say people will die if firefighters are no longer responding to most medical emergencies. But others say there will be little or no impact to public safety.

Most medical situations in the city don’t need more than the two emergency responders in an ambulance, said Shawn Ballard, co-owner of Ballard Ambulance.

“Is it nice to have the fire department there? Sure it is,” he said. “It is necessary? No, not most of the time.”

Kuntz met with officials from RiverCom, the regional emergency dispatch center, on Wednesday to talk about changing the current practice of automatically dispatching firefighters and private ambulance crews to all medical situations.

Emergency medical calls accounted for some 2,300 of the Wenatchee Fire Department’s 2,600 runs last year.

Kuntz said the city will implement a new priority dispatch program, where firefighters are only dispatched to serious medical emergencies.

“That’s the direction we’re going,” he said. “We want to stop our fire trucks from going to every medical call.”

Fire Chief Stan Smoke said he initially proposed the idea of priority dispatching to Kuntz after the mayor said he wanted the fire department to stop responding to most medical emergencies. Smoke said he’s studied the idea for many years, but there are procedural issues that got in the way.

“The primary concern is that it will take longer to get people dispatched to an emergency by asking more questions (of 911 callers),” he said. “The issues are being worked on and it appears that these things can be overcome.”

He also said that RiverCom would like all fire departments in the area — and not just the Wenatchee Fire Department — to go to a similar priority system.

Kuntz analyzed a year’s worth of EMS calls in the city before concluding that city firefighters probably only needed to respond to 700 to 750 of the 2,600 runs they made.

He said the city will contract with Ballard Ambulance and Lifeline Ambulance to guarantee those emergency calls will continue to be taken care of in the same manner they are now being handled by firefighters and the ambulance companies. The contracts will not cost the city more money, the mayor said.

Capt. Kelly Lindemann, president of Wenatchee Firefighters Local 453, said in an interview last week that most cities in the state that are the size of Wenatchee or larger provide EMS services through their fire departments. He said nearly all of them have a special levy, utility tax or billing system that pays for it. “The mayor needs to relax his stance on this EMS issue and allow us to help our citizens like we should,” he said.

Firefighters have said at City Council meetings that they believe people will die if the fire department stops responding to all EMS calls.

Kuntz said earlier this month that he talked with officials from Lifeline and Ballard and that both companies are interested in contracting with the city. He said the companies indicated the change would have no impact on their current operations.

Private ambulances already respond to all of the EMS calls coming through RiverCom and are responsible for all transports to hospitals, Ballard said this week.

There’s a misperception out there that this plan is going to put a huge workload on us,” he added. “But it doesn’t change what we do at all.”

Shawn and his brother, Scott Ballard, said emergency services in the Wenatchee Valley have varied greatly since their father started the first private ambulance company locally in 1967. In the early years, private ambulances handled all EMS calls, even extricating victims from car crashes.

We’ve seen every scenario, from no firefighter response to now fire response on nearly every medical call,” Scott Ballard said.

Shawn Ballard said that in cases of heart attacks and other life-threatening emergencies, it’s important for everyone to respond, including fire and police. He said the current protocol for treating heart attack patients needs a half dozen people to do CPR, administer oxygen, check vital signs and give medication.

He said there are typically two to three of those types of incidents a month in the entire Wenatchee Valley.

Large emergencies with multiple victims will also still require many emergency responders, as do tricky situations such as moving a morbidly obese person or getting a victim in a gurney down steep stairs.

The Ballards said private ambulance companies won’t profit from contracting with the city, since they already handle those calls now.

Some critics have said at public meetings and in online forums that private ambulance workers are less trained than firefighters and not always available.

But Linette Gahringer, executive director of the regional EMS council, said the emergency workers at Ballard and Lifeline are more trained than firefighters. The Wenatchee Fire Department provides basic life support, which means some of its firefighters are emergency medical technicians trained to treat critically ill and injured people. The ambulance companies both provide advanced life support, which means they have paramedics, who are more extensively trained to treat more severe injuries and illnesses in the field.

Both ambulance companies staff at least two two-person ambulance crews 24 hours a day in the Wenatchee Valley. Each ambulance has at least one paramedic and either a second paramedic or an EMT. Ballard has another two-person crew that works on weekdays and one extra person that works on weekends.

All ambulance personnel can be called in to work at a moment’s notice if necessary, Scott Ballard said.

Gahringer said the EMS council keeps tabs on the response times and level of care for patients in all medical emergencies. She said there are no problems with delayed or compromised care from private ambulance companies in the valley.

She said that anyone responding to medical emergencies in the Wenatchee Valley is expected to get there in eight minutes or less — the standard set by the council.

“There have not been any poor outcomes due to a delay in response from the private companies,” she said.

Gahringer explained that emergency medical systems vary widely in the state. In King County, fire departments have full-time paramedics and ambulances and are the primary emergency responders. But in rural Eastern Washington, it’s more common to have private companies or volunteers answering those calls. She said a private ambulance company handles most medical emergencies in Grant County.

Douglas County Fire District 2 in East Wenatchee and Chelan County Fire District 1 in Sunnyslope use a combination of volunteer and paid firefighters to repond to emergencies. But they both rely on Ballard and Lifeline to transport patients.

The Greater Wenatchee area is very fortunate to have two private advanced life support ambulance services,” Gahringer said. She added that because no hospital or fire department in the valley provides that level of emergency service, “We rely heavily on the private agencies for it.”

Smoke said he does not have any concerns about his department giving up some emergency medical calls.

“I think we’re going to go into it slowly and make sure the system is in place and that the changes are well thought out,” he added. “We need to make sure that we (firefighters) are still responding to the calls that we need to be at for scene safety and life-threatening injuries.”

Kuntz said that after meeting with numerous people involved in emergency care in the city, “I’m having a hard time trying to figure out how we’re going to be worse off because of this.”

Michelle McNiel: 664-7152

REPOST (Courtesy of wenatcheeworld.com)