Squad Uses Technology to Address Staffing, Notification

With more than 120 members providing staffing and administrative support for three stations in busy Chesterfield County, Virginia, the Bensley-Bermuda Volunteer Rescue Squad (BBVRS) is typical of many Virginia volunteer rescue squads. Staffing ambulances, letting members know about activities and meetings at the station and keeping members informed about the activities of the squad are all key tasks for Bensley’s leaders.

“Getting information out to all our members is a difficult task if you want it done right away,” noted Barry Drumheller, Chief of Operations for BBVRS. “To make matters worse, the model of radio pagers, used for decades in EMS and fire, just wouldn’t work with our geographically distributed and constantly moving volunteer workforce.”

That volunteer workforce includes members with jobs and homes inside a one mile radius to a larger than 100 mile radius. Recognizing that radio pagers wouldn’t work was the first step and “realizing that the cost of digital pagers was just too high” was the second step, according to Drumheller. BBVRS turned to a Virginia company called TellBlast for help.

TellBlast, based in McLean, Virginia, delivers a service which can call existing telephone numbers and leave a prerecorded message or deliver a prerecorded announcement – up to 5,000 at a time. With the flexibility to create individualized call lists “we can send out staffing requests to the entire membership in less than two minutes, or just send messages to our officers or members of one of our special teams,” said Chief Drumheller.

BBVRS also uses the service for its’ administrative functions. According to Squad President Gary Frame “TellBlast lets us keep members in the loop – health and welfare of other members, or interesting news – and helps us to keep our members connected” to the Squad.

“Our service is a great fit for the volunteer rescue service in Virginia,” commented Nick Unger, CEO of TellBlast. According to Unger, TellBlast “can accommodate up to 5,000 or more simultaneous calls” on the service, and is built on a highly reliable system. This allows “agencies like Bensley to have confidence the service will work when they need it.”

Currently in use at Bensley, expanded use of TellBlast is likely to increase. BBVRS President Frame noted that his department “can do a better job alerting our crews to coverage needs, informing them about Squad activities and keeping them connected with the things we do.”

Ease of use is an important feature for the system. In selecting TellBlast, the web interface was a key decision point for Bensley. The web interface allows for quick changes to the lists, and is easy and familiar to anyone who has used the Internet. Once a call list is set up, a toll free number is called and the Squad’s passcode is entered so that a message can be recorded. In less than two minutes from first dialing 877 TELLBLAST, the Squad can have notification out to every member in the department. The reporting features of the TellBlast system also allow for tracking of when a call was completed to a particular number, and how long the call took. Chief Drumheller made note of the tracking feature by saying “this tells us if the entire message was delivered, and when…which really helps to eliminate the ‘you never called me about this’ phenomenon.”

President Frame cautioned that the TellBlast service was not a replacement for face-to-face communication, but “it does give us a way to keep in touch or to get a conversation going.” And “for less than the cost of one digital pager’s service per month,” said Frame, “we see a lot of value in this service.”

SOURCE: Bensley-Bermuda Vol. Rescue Squad, Inc.

Bensley-Bermuda Volunteer Rescue Squad, Inc.

Contact: Public Relations Officer, 804-748-6122, info@bbvrs.org

About Bensley-Bermuda Volunteer Rescue Squad, Inc.

A 501(c)(3) non-profit entity, Bensley-Bermuda Volunteer Rescue

Squad, Inc. (BBVRS) delivers 24 hour free emergency ambulance and technical rescue services to the Chesterfield County community and the surrounding Richmond area. Operating out of three stations along the busy Jefferson Davis Highway/Interstate Route 95 corridor, BBVRS responds to nearly 5,000 calls for service annually. BBVRS also offers training and education, among its members and throughout the community, in methods of safety and first aid. For more information visit www.bbvrs.org.

About TellBlast

TellBlast provides automated call messaging services to meet the need for urgent, personalized communication. TellBlast allows groups of all sizes to conveniently record a message and instantly deliver it to phones – including mobile phones – through simple web and telephone management. Based in McLean, Virginia, TellBlast successfully delivered over 3 million messages in 2006. For more information, please visit www.tellblast.com or call 877-442-5578.