October 12, 2018 at 4:22 p.m.
Rural EMS/EMR listening session held at Howard Young
Eich: 'There's a lot of challenges'
Rural EMS/EMR listening session held at Howard Young
The Woodruff meeting was the third of six sessions being held across the state. In attendance were 26 people involved in emergency medical services in Forest, Vilas, Oneida and Lincoln counties as well as elected officials at the county and state levels, including Marv Anderson, a Vilas County supervisor and state representative Rob Swearingen.
"The idea is to hear from rural EMS to get the rural voice out," Eich said in an interview before Tuesday's session. "A lot of folks work on EMS as an across the board issue. We certainly do. But we think the rural voice needs to get a platform, needs to get out there more often."
Different dynamics
Eich said the dynamics for rural providers are different than for those working in urban and metropolitan areas.
"We're here to ask EMS, fire (personnel) and whoever else provides the services to talk about their experience and then brainstorm at the end to start thinking about solutions," he said. "There's a lot of challenges - it's easy to go there - but we want them to start telling their advocates, statewide advocates, what they want to see."
For most of the nearly two-hour session Tuesday, some of those dynamics Eich mentioned were highlighted by the people in attendance.
From representatives with Laona's EMS in Forest County, one issue mentioned was the safety and security of ambulance personnel dispatched to areas of the county that are a part of the ever growing illegal drug problem there. The consistent need for improving broadband coverage for things such as making sure critical EKG information for a patient with heart issues is transmitted to a hospital in a timely manner was another item identified by those in attendance.
Probably the biggest issue rural emergency medical service provider face, according to Eich, is the need for people to be trained as EMRs and EMTs.
"Especially since rural areas tend to have a higher percentage of volunteers," he said.
The second largest challenge, Eich believes, is funding for emergency medical services.
"Everybody does things differently," he said. "If a township is paying for its own EMS or a couple of townships together or maybe a city ... budgets are tight and levy limits limit the ability of folks to expand if they need to."
Eich said the third largest challenge he's heard actually ties into the lack of people to staff EMS units - the requirements needed to become an EMT.
"Getting your license and certification (is a challenge)," he said. "If you walk out the door to help somebody, you roll out in an ambulance, it doesn't matter if you're a volunteer or paid career service, whatever it is ... you have the same requirements. So, it's people getting used to that. Times have changed, medicine has gotten more complex and so there's always the new thing."
Just as medicine is changing for nurses and doctors and hospitals, it's changing for EMS, too, he said.
"The continuing education is an issue ... in rural areas, people are driving to attend classes to get the certification and recertification," he explained. "They're maybe driving an hour or so to get to the school where the class is held in addition to the volunteering they're doing."
During the listening session, it was noted that some towns have as few as two or three emergency responders.
Some of the participants even acknowledged feeling uneasy about being away from their respective towns for a few hours to attend the meeting.
'I'm optimistic'
Each of the six listening sessions is being recorded "so that we can capture some of the common themes," Eich said, adding the information will be spread around among those who couldn't attend.
"Even though we're doing six sessions, there's still a lot of areas in between," he said. "It's a big state."
Once the sessions are completed, the information will be shared not only with EMS advocates but also state legislators.
"I think there's been a bill here or there that has been (the result of) a constituent reaching out to their legislator and legislators have been responsive," he said. "That's fantastic. If we come together as a group as much as we can and come up with some shared ideas and solutions, I'm optimistic that legislators want to hear that and try and help."
Sandy Anderson, president of Howard Young, attended Tuesday's listening session.
She said she and her staff have heard many of the concerns voiced during the meeting and she agrees with Eich that rural issues pertaining to the EMR/EMS realm need to be known.
"The stories that resonate with people are the stories that are personal," Anderson said. "The stories about transporting your mother, transporting your brother, transporting your neighbor ... those are the types of stories that hit home."
Anderson said she believes the public needs to be better educated in "pre-hospital work."
"What the pre-hospital team does for us, whether it's EMTs or paramedics ... those people are critical for us to be able to do what we do," she said. "So, making sure that we have enough of those people is going to be critical. We heard about that again tonight."
Brian Jopek may be reached via email at bjopek @lakelandtimes.com.
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