June 2010 marks Greene County EMS 6-year anniversary
It’s only been six years since the Greene County Board of Commissioners took over the county ambulance service from a private company on June 1, 2004, but Greene County EMS has changed dramatically over that time span.
Despite call volume surging 30 percent compared to five years ago, response times are better. More importantly, the Greene County Board of Commissioners is well on its way to realizing an important goal: placing EMS responders within 10 minutes of 95 percent of Greene County’s population.
“Our response times were fine to begin with, but we had been watching our call volume over the years,” said Chairman Dene Channell. “And with our local EMS first responders going on over 2,000 calls a year now, we thought it was time to prepare for the future.”
And prepare they did. In May 2008, the commissioners took the advice of an advisory panel and expanded Greene County EMS from two EMS crews stationed at Greensboro to three crews at three different stations across the county. The crews are at EMS stations in Greensboro and Union Point, as well as a third crew currently housed in the Old Salem Fire/Rescue Department.
“This move was about the future. We wanted our response times to keep pace with the county’s growth and the future needs of some of our other aging, more heavily-populated areas, such as Union Point and the lake area,” said County Manager Byron Lombard.
Expanding Greene County EMS in 2008 has seemingly paid off. Calls soared to a record 2,399 in 2009, a significant difference when compared to the 1,853 calls EMS responded to in 2005. Overall, Greene County EMS has responded to 12,624 calls in the past six years alone.
The EMS department has also seen the local landscape of medical providers expand, too. EMS services St. Joseph’s East Hospital, of course, but it also services a number of clinics, including TenderCare, Cowles Clinic, and MCG at Lake Oconee. And EMS routinely transports patients to hospitals in Athens, Atlanta, Augusta, and Macon.
More subtle changes have also enhanced the ability of Greene County EMS to respond to a number of calls at once. An EMT-Intermediate class was held locally, and at least one person from each local fire department had the opportunity to take the class and effectively become an EMT for his or her area. The commissioners have also approved of the purchase of additional, reserve ambulances over the years, with most being purchased using SPLOST funds. Those two recent additions to EMS have become instrumental in recent incidents of heavy call volume, including fatality crashes on I-20 and Highway 15 North. Additional ambulances were activated within minutes thanks to the reserve EMTs and ambulances.
When you have three crews, three EMS stations, and a reserve corps of EMTs and reserve ambulances, it can be easy to forget how ambulance services started in Greene County.
“Greene County’s first ambulance doubled as a hearse in the 70’s, and ambulatory services were shuffled from one private provider to another for years” Lombard said. “Now, only a couple of decades later, we have a county-run EMS that has response times better than most large cities. We’ve come a long way.”