Martinsville Fire & EMS still serve, though some don't know it

The Martinsville Bulletin
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer

Kris Shrader, division chief of operations for the Martinsville Fire & EMS Department, inspects equipment in one of the city’s two ambulances. (Bulletin photo by Mickey Powell)

When a person in the city calls 911 for emergency medical services, expect the Martinsville Fire & EMS Department to send an ambulance.

Recent problems at the Martinsville-Henry County Rescue Squad have not changed ambulance response procedures in the city, said Kris Shrader, the department’s division chief of operations who oversees the EMS program.

The Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services recently shut down the rescue squad for 48 hours after inspectors discovered its ambulances were not stocked properly. The county and city have since revoked the squad’s authority to answer calls, and the United Way of Henry County-Martinsville has suspended the squad’s funding.

Shrader said no lapse in ambulance service in the city has occurred due to the squad’s situation and “there will not be” such a lapse.

Since the fire department began running ambulances three years ago, said Shrader, whenever the 911 center dispatched an ambulance to a location in Martinsville and volunteer rescue squad personnel were available, both the squad and the fire and EMS department would send ambulances.

Upon arriving, city paramedics would determine whether the patient needed advanced life support. If the patient needed advanced care and if the responding squad volunteers were trained to provide it, the city crew would let them handle the call, according to Shrader.

Now, it is standard procedure that the city handles all emergency medical calls in Martinsville. But if both city-operated ambulances are on calls at the same time and another emergency medical call comes in, the 911 center summons the private Stone Ambulance Service.

About 80 percent of Stone Ambulance’s work is non-emergency calls, said President Michelle Stone-Agee. The service is called on to provide backup to city ambulance crews only about three times per week, she said, so “it’s not overburdening us.”

The city fire and EMS department operates with paid employees 24 hours a day. All are trained in both firefighting and emergency medical response, and more than half are trained to provide advanced life support, Shrader said.

Through August, the department had responded to 1,800 calls this year. Of those calls, 1,537 — or 85 percent — were medical calls, statistics show.

On average, the department responds to about 200 medical calls monthly, Shrader said. August was a little heavier with 223 calls, figures indicate.

Still, city crews responded to 92 percent of those 223 calls in eight minutes or less, he said.

The Western Virginia EMS Council recently recognized the Martinsville Fire & EMS Department as its Outstanding EMS Agency for 2007. The award makes the department eligible for a statewide award to be presented in November.

Shrader was named the council’s Outstanding EMS Administrator.

The department was recognized largely due to its commitment to the city, according to Kester Dingus, assistant director of the council, which oversees EMS providers in the region.

Dingus noted that when the department began running ambulances in 2004, its call volume rose from about 400 to more than 2,000 per year. Its medics “have continually increased their level of expertise” in emergency medicine without asking for pay raises, he said.

Despite the department’s high volume of medical calls, some people do not realize who provides ambulance service in the city, Shrader said.

Even some medical professionals apparently do not know.

Shrader said that recently a city ambulance crew responded to a doctor’s office where a patient was having a heart attack and needed to go to the hospital. The crew went into the office with a stretcher, yet medical staff asked them when an ambulance would be arriving, he said.

“We’re doing an outstanding job,” said Shrader, noting the statistics. As much as ambulances and medics are traveling around Martinsville, “I don’t understand how folks don’t realize we’re doing it.”