by Alex Brooks
The Berlin Board of Fire Commissioners has put out an urgent appeal for additional volunteers, as they currently have only three EMTs to handle all their calls. With so few EMTs, and all three of them having full-time jobs, the Rescue Squad cannot always respond to calls. The Commissioners told the public in an ad in The Eastwick Press, “We could face the prospect of discontinuing service in the very near future, if we cannot recruit and retain more members.”
The Berlin Rescue Squad currently has eight members, three of them being EMTs.
[private]If one or two of those EMTs had circumstances in their lives which made them discontinue their service, and new EMTs had not been recruited, the Ambulance Service in Berlin would not be viable. As it is now, Rescue Squad Captain Tammy Osterhout estimates that the ambulance cannot roll in response to about a quarter of the calls. The ambulance must have a driver and an EMT on board before it can roll. A three-person crew is preferred, but most of the time it is a two-person crew.
When there are problems getting a crew, the Squad relies on mutual aid from neighboring towns, but the neighboring towns are having their own problems with personnel.
If a local EMT crew cannot be deployed, patients must then wait for a professional ambulance like Mohawk to come out from Brunswick, or even farther. Osterhout said the average response time for those ambulances responding to a call in Berlin is half an hour. She said in some emergency medical situations, like a heart attack, the patient has only ten minutes before irreversible damage will occur.
She said the Berlin ambulance can usually respond anywhere in Berlin in ten minutes or less. She speaks of “the golden hour” that many doctors refer to as the time when a medical crisis can be most effectively dealt with, and the danger of using half that time waiting for medical help to arrive.
The lack of EMTs has been an ongoing problem in this valley for many years, and not just for Berlin. Four or five years ago Berlin arranged to have the Empire ambulance standing by at the Berlin Fire Station for three months on a trial basis, and the Empire Ambulance people found that the call volume in this area was not large enough to justify having a unit based here.
The Berlin Fire Commissioners have investigated what it would cost to hire personnel to staff the ambulance. If they paid a driver and an EMT to be on call 12 hours a day, five days a week, it would cost about $135,000 a year, which would be paid through the Fire Department’s property tax.
If the Fire Department were to decide that such a cost is not acceptable and the Rescue Squad were to cease operating, the area would rely on professional ambulances. The downside to that, in addition to longer response times, is that it would be more expensive for the patients being transported and cared for. Berlin Ambulance does not bill patients that it transports, but the professional ambulances do.
Osterhout said the regulations and the protocols required by the state have grown more numerous and more onerous for small volunteer squads to comply with. She understands that these regulations are aimed at patient safety, but she believes they are threatening the viability of small rural volunteer ambulance squads.
The answer to this knotty problem is to find more people willing to volunteer and train as EMTs. But the Fire Department has had no response to last week’s ad in The Eastwick Press seeking volunteers.
For those who volunteer, the Rescue Squad will pay for training, textbooks, and mileage upon successful completion of EMT training and certification. The Squad also provides a retirement benefit, payable at age 62, for each year of service.
EMT training requires 190 hours of class time, which takes about six months to complete going to class two nights a week and some Saturdays. The resulting certification is good for three years, and then the re-certification process takes less time. There are some ongoing training and continuing education requirements, but it is not as onerous as the initial certification. For details about all of this call Captain Tammy Osterhout at 658-2924.[/private]