Emergency service undergoing review

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

Emergency medical services have long been heralded as the first line of defense in emergencies, with their role growing increasingly important in rural communities.

As such, the Wyoming Healthcare Commission, in its search for rural health care solutions with Carbon County as the guinea pig, has contracted with New Jersey-based SafeTech Solutions to evaluate the county’s EMS system.

Gary Wingrove and John Becknell of SafeTech recently visited Carbon County. They talked with a medical professionals and city and county officials about the system and the community’s perceptions.

“We’re not the fixers,” Wingrove said. “Our role here is to assess and then to prescribe the best practices from other communities according to what might fit into this one.”

They defined EMS as all services provided in an emergency prior to arrival at the hospital. That includes anything from answering a 911 call to giving telephone instructions for patient care to taking patients to a care facility.

The SafeTech representatives said they often make recommendations to communities that require the involvement of more than one entity. To them, the responsibility for emergency medicine rests on the shoulders of the community as a whole.

According to the consultants, hospital officials should think about shortages in ambulance workers while organizations and individuals should be aware of how an the emergency service’s functionality affects them. City officials should think about the importance of a fully-funded service and public education can be accomplished through newspapers.

Becknell said they discovered that Carbon County is served by a hodgepodge of volunteer workers and full-time, paid staff, mostly in Rawlins, who also serve at the hospital.

“This is the two-headed monster of EMS,” Becknell said. “It is difficult to recruit and retain volunteers anywhere, across the country. It goes hand in hand with the issue of how to fund EMS if staff must be hired.”