Regional VS. Local EMS Services

[Jeff Toorish]

I am a volunteer for our local EMS service, which is attached to the semi-autonomous fire department.

During the past few months, there has been a general discussion regarding combining with another, larger, service. Essentially, the larger service would take us over. We already have a close relationship with that service and many of our members work for both, or volunteer for both.

As part of the discussion, we have also talked about the chances of there becoming a county-wide (regional) Fire/EMS service. Some people believe that is inevitable, but here in Maine there is not much tradition or history of regionalization.

Has anyone gone through the transition from local to joint or regional Fire/EMS, and if so, what are the pros and cons?

Jeff

 

[rescue1]

Depends how it is done.
Two examples from the dangerous and exciting Eastern Shore of Maryland:
Caroline County offered to aid the volunteer EMS stations by staffing the volly stations with county employees. The stations thought it was a good idea and it's grown from then so that most of the EMS is run by the county, though if I recall correctly, they still run from the volly stations. Everyone was fairly happy with the setup if memory serves, though I'm not positive how volunteer EMS works there.

In Queen Anne's County, the Dept of Emergency Services purchased several ambulances to replace their medic chase units after a few incidences of volunteer stations failing to respond to calls. Calls there are dual dispatched, meaning if the call is, say, in Station 5's area, Ambulance 5 and Paramedic 600 (the closest county unit) are dispatched. If the volly truck gets out with an ALS crew, they cancel the county, otherwise they both respond and decide who will transport. This caused a lot of friction with the fire stations, as it was difficult to "compete", as it were, with the paid ALS crews, meaning that the volunteer crews were used for lifting and loading and transporting the occasional priority 3 sick person, especially the ones which had the county unit responding out of their station.

Regionalized fire is quite some ways off on the Shore, but I imagine it could go the same way--paid FFs helping the vollies or replacing them entirely.

So, it could go either way, really. Hope that was semi helpful (and any QAC or CC folks feel free to correct any errors)