Morgantown W.Va. — A new agreement has been reached on EMS rotation, the Monongalia County Commission announced in conjunction with MECCA 911 Wednesday.
In a collaborative effort between the four ambulance dispatchers in Monongalia County, a set of zones were established which are expected to greatly reduce response time for medical emergencies. This would include the participation of Mon Health, Star City VFD, Jan-Care and HealthTeam Critical Care Transport.
“For an example, right now Mon EMS is primary in what we call Zone 1, the Blacksville area, but we also have a HealthTeam ambulance in that Zone 1 also,” said MECCA 911 Director Jim Smith. “So when Mon EMS gets tied up on the first call, then we have the HealthTeam in that area also that can work as a backup for Mon EMS.”
In cooperation with MECCA 911 and the Monongalia County Commission, the zones were implemented for a trial run for the past three weeks. Even though the amount of services implemented varied among the dispatchers, all four agencies have been involved in the test run with success.
“So far we’ve reduced response time in all of Mon County by over two minutes, which is very significant,” Smith said. “Because in EMS, every second could be the difference between life and death.”
The issue came to the forefront with the launch of WVU Medicine’s HealthTeam Critical Care, an ambulance service with locations in Westover, Cheat Lake, Clinton District, and Blacksville.
Under the previous Memorandum of Understanding, MonHealth had first priority among the three ambulance services on calls — all coming from a central location.
“We had a lot of people coming to our meetings asking about the service, we’ve had letters to the editor, we’ve had people writing us letters but we listened to all of that,” said County Commissioner Sean Sikora. “As soon as the issue came up we immediately started engaging Mon EMS to, ‘Okay, so how do we move forward’ conversations.”
Despite the potential conflict of interest between the four entities, each one has appeared to be cooperative in this new effort, according to both County Commission and MECCA 911 respectively. Along with cooperation, another key goal that seemed to be mutual was one of transparency which will include tracking of response time.
“Where other counties have to hire county employees, they have to buy county ambulances, they have to have county facilities to provide that service because they don’t have entities that are wanting to do that so we’re very lucky, these are good problems to have,” he said.
The original MOU does not expire until June 2019, but the new agreement is expected to be implemented July 1, 2018.