Empty ambulances: Rural EMS providers facing severe shortage of paramedics

[TexasTowelie]

KOKOMO - About 30 times a month, patients come to the emergency room at Rush Memorial Hospital and end up waiting – and waiting, and waiting – sometimes up to 20 hours.

That’s because those patients require medical treatment that the hospital, located in the small, rural town of Rushville, can’t provide, and need an ambulance transport to a larger facility that offers higher levels of care.

Rushville is a community of 6,000 people located about 50 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

The problem is that more often than not, there’s no qualified paramedic available to do the transfer. That leaves the hospital scrambling to convince out-of-town ambulance services to drive sometimes up to an hour to come and pick up their patients for transport.

Carrie Tressler, the hospital’s vice president of nursing who oversees its emergency services, said they’ve been trying to hire a paramedic for two years to do the ambulance transfers, but they’ve not had one person apply for the job.

Read more: https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/state_news/empty-ambulances-rural-ems-providers-facing-severe-shortage-of-paramedics/article_80601764-fd05-11ea-a5fc-afafd7061e2b.html

[msongs]

1. no applicants? step one is raise the pay...way up nt

[Midnight Writer]

2. I once lived in a rural village that had a volunteer ambulance service.

Call and two old guys would show up in a van. They'd load the patient in the back and drive to the nearest hospital 30 miles away.

Someone told me that if you call late at night, you gotta wait until they get dressed and brew some coffee.

Luckily, I never needed them.

[murielm99]

3. Durbin is on the job for EMTs in Illinois.

There is a new law to provide funding and training. It looks like there will be more where that came from:

https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-announces-5-million-in-new-rural-ems-funding-in-year-end-funding-bill