Ohio Fire Chief Irked at University`s Hiring of EMT

March 28--A decision by the administration at Denison University to begin using a private ambulance service could put students at risk, Granville Township Fire Chief Jeff Hussey said.

But Laurel Kennedy, the university's vice president of student development, said that assertion is a little confusing. The university was trying only to address concerns raised by the fire chief himself when it chose to use the private service.

"We heard loud and clear from the fire department over the course of the summer that we were overextending their resources (with medical runs to campus) and diverting resources away from the rest of the community," Kennedy said.

Starting last weekend, Denison University is paying an emergency medical technician from Courtesy Ambulance of Newark to be on campus for four hours every Friday and Saturday night. The paramedic is there to determine the severity of medical calls.

In emergencies, Kennedy said, the Granville Township paramedics are still called. But for less-serious cases, Courtesy Ambulance will take the student to Licking Memorial Hospital in Newark, as happened last weekend twice: one student dislocated a shoulder, and another needed stitches.

"Those were exactly the kinds of cases this was intended for," Kennedy said.

"I'm not in agreement," Hussey said. "Response time will be 10 or 15 minutes longer, and the university has not made it clear to me what level of medical capabilities and service they can provide. I suspect it's a lower level of service than we provide."

Some think Denison's decision was at least partly made to hide the number of alcohol-related calls. The township fire department keeps track of those statistics and reports them to anyone who asks, while "a transport by Courtesy Ambulance doesn't generate a public record," Hussey said. "Any university is worried about its image."

Hussey said that about 20 percent of the township's medic runs are to campus, and about 30 percent of those are alcohol-related. Most of the alcohol-related calls occur on the weekends, overburdening the township's resources.

Since the school year began in September, Hussey said, township paramedics have responded to 52 alcohol-related calls. The 2010-11 school year brought the most: 55. Whether this year's calls top 55 might never be known.

"We don't make runs public," said Eileen Dudgeon, Courtesy's vice president.

When asked whether Denison would make those records public, Kennedy said: "Certainly not. In the same way any college in the area would not make it public if a security guard put a student in their car and drove them to the hospital, which is how most of them do it."

The rise in alcohol-related calls for service parallels a university program intended to address on-campus problem drinking. The Medical Amnesty Program says that if a student determines a need for medical attention because of an alcohol overdose, that call won't result in disciplinary action.

"We addressed the reality that young people often don't call for help because they're afraid of getting in trouble," Kennedy said.

No one, including the Granville Fire Department, was prepared when the number of calls increased sevenfold after Medical Amnesty was introduced in 2010, Kennedy said.

"I feel like we've made tremendous headway" in responding to student drinking, Kennedy said. " And now I feel like we've come up with a really logical solution to help us reduce the burden on local EMS resources. But some people still don't like it.

"We're damned if we do, damned if we don't ."

elyttle@dispatch.com

@ewlyttle

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