EMT Week: Ambulance Services Face Challenges

Part 1

(Le Mars) — This week is recognized as National Emergency Medical Technicians Week, a time we honor and pay tribute to those volunteers and paid staff that come to our aid when we are sick or injured. Bill Rosacker serves as the director of the Le Mars Ambulance Service. He says a challenge for Le Mars,
and ambulance services across the state, is to find enough volunteers willing to take the necessary training, and commit the time required to help on an ambulance service staff.

Rosacker says many smaller towns across the state are having troubles trying to staff an ambulance, especially during the daytime work hours. He points to Merrill as an example.

The Le Mars Ambulance Director says one solution would be to have counties and the state classify community ambulance services as an essential public safety entity. He says Wright County in North Central Iowa is trying a program which has the attention of the entire state.

Some people may wonder why an ambulance service is not already considered to be an essential entity? The issue has been brought to the attention of the state legislature, but so far, lawmakers have not acted upon the ambulance shortage issue. Rosacker says, in part, it is because ambulance services are controlled differently from town to town.

Rosacker says in many small town communities, the local ambulance service is actually operated as part of the community fire department, which is also finding it difficult to have enough volunteers to adequately serve a community.  Rosacker says Taylor County, Iowa located in the far southwest corner of the state doesn’t have any ambulance services.  The county has to rely upon ambulance services from neighboring counties to provide first aid service.  We will continue our series of reports regarding EMT week and the challenges of local ambulance services during tomorrow’s news updates.

 

Part 2

We continue our series of reports focusing on local ambulance
services during this National EMT Week. We identified in our first report the need for volunteers to sufficiently staff a local ambulance service.
Bill Rosacker, the director of the Le Mars Ambulance Service says due to the shortage of volunteers, those who have decided to volunteer for a community ambulance service finds themselves on-call for long hours and for several
days.

Rosacker says for many communities, including Le Mars, the number of emergency calls have been steadily on the rise, adding to the stress level of EMT’s and paramedics and other ambulance service volunteers.

Another challenge for people wanting to volunteer for an ambulance service is the expense and time commitment for adequate training. Rosacker says sometimes the training time and expense, unfortunately becomes a deterrent for
volunteers.

In our next part of our continued series, we will look at how many community ambulance services are losing money due to Medicaid and Medicare.

 

Part 3

(Le Mars) — Today, we conclude our three-part series looking at local ambulance services during this National EMT Week. Too many times, ambulance services lose money when transporting patients that are either Medicare or Medicaid patients. Bill Rosacker, the director of the Le Mars Ambulance Service says it happens frequently.

Rosacker says several ambulance services across the country are re-defining their non-emergency calls where they will not transport a Medicare or Medicaid patient.

The Le Mars Ambulance Service Director says in the future, there may be some funding from the federal government provided to ambulance services to help offset the financial losses when transporting a Medicare or Medicaid patient.

As we indicated during our first part of this series, the state legislature has been made aware of the problems facing community ambulance services, but so far, no action has been taken. According to Rosacker, he believes
lawmakers will need to address the concerns of ambulance services, and do so fairly quickly.

The problem with available ambulance services is not limited to only small rural communities. Sioux City recently lost its contracted ambulance service, Siouxland Paramedics, due to financial reimbursement concerns.
Rosacker says there have been some positive news come from Plymouth County in terms of community ambulance services. He says Oyens is enrolling a volunteer in the EMT training course, and Merrill has had a couple of nurses step up and serve on the ambulance staff, while two other volunteers are looking into participating in an EMT training.