S.C. County has Two New Ambulances but Not Enough Medics
Oct. 03--Emergency Medical Services leaders are struggling to find qualified paramedics for its expanded ambulance fleet.
Beaufort County has two new ambulances to expand its fleet, but not enough paramedics to operate them, county leaders say.
The Emergency Medical Services fleet was revamped and two new ambulances added last year, part of an attempt to improve response times as suggested in a 2010 independent review of the department's service.
That report concluded the county provides "a sound level of service" but outlined dozens of recommendations to improve the department.
The department bought the two ambulances late last year for $150,000 each, according to county public safety director Phil Foot. The new rigs are supposed to expand the active fleet to 14 ambulances, but the county has had little success recruiting the 12 new paramedics it needs to staff the new crews, Foot said.
"It's been harder than we expected," he said. "We've made a little stride, but it's been a very, very difficult process."
The county is advertising the vacancies in nationally distributed medical journals and through a website called ZipRecruiter, Foot said.
"It's frustrating, but it's something we'd find in any type of job," county administrator Gary Kubic added. "If we're finding we're pricing ourselves out with our current salary ranges, we may have to review those and ask, does it match the cost of living?"
Emergency medical technicians and paramedics in the county make between $11.69 and $13.69 hourly, based on their certification level.
EMS staff could adjust salaries within its budget if need be, but an extra budget appropriation would require council approval, he added.
Both new ambulances were delivered and certified by state health officials in late spring and early summer, Foot said.
Last year the department also replaced three other ambulances that were between 6 and 8 years old and stationed in the Bluffton, Lobeco and St. Helena Island areas. And this year, EMS remounted two other ambulances on new chassis for $115,000 each.
Each ambulance also is now equipped with Lucas 2 chest-compression devices, which can perform CPR on a patient without interruption and more consistently than a paramedic, EMS director Donna Ownby has said. The machines have saved at least one life and have been used 112 times, Ownby and Foot said.
However, hiring new employees hasn't been as easy as upgrading equipment, as the county has hired only five new paramedics.
The new crews eventually will be stationed in Burton and Bluffton, but the department will wait to decide exactly where until it hires all 12 paramedics it needs, Foot said.
That could take months.
"I can't set up a deadline for a simple reason: I don't want put myself on a timetable I can't make," Foot said. "In my mind, I already wanted this done, but I'm not going to sacrifice what we're looking for in order to make a deadline."
Months after the 2010 report, EMS cut the average time it took to get units out of their stations in half, from two minutes to one. In the years since, the department also has changed the way dispatchers communicate to improve service, county leaders have said.
The report found average EMS response times -- from when the call was answered to when emergency crews arrived on the scene -- of 10 minutes and 53 seconds in 2010, and that average has declined slightly since, Foot said. He did not have access to current average response time Thursday evening.
Follow reporter Zach Murdock at twitter.com/IPBG_Zach.
Copyright 2014 - The Island Packet (Hilton Head Island, S.C.)
