White revives squad’s revenue, morale, skill
By Mark Patrick Grandstaff
The Dominion Post (Morgantown, West Virginia)
Copyright 2006 The Dominion Post
The 2006 Emergency Medical Services Administrator of the Year works for the Marion County Rescue Squad.
Lloyd White was named the 2006 EMS Administrator of the Year for invigorating the skill, morale and financial health of the Marion Rescue Squad.
In 2000, before White’s appointment as administrator in August of that year, Marion EMS employees were the lowest paid in the state, said Michael Angelucci, a Marion staff paramedic.
“We were basically minimum wage,” Angelucci said.
Before White arrived, employees were expected to find training at other agencies at their own expense, Angelucci said. The agency could not even cash the checks it wrote, liquidating assets and bonds just to make payroll.
Gov. Joe Manchin, who was then secretary of state and president of the Marion EMS board of directors, appointed White in August 2000 to address the agency’s problems. White was a staff emergency medical technician and a county health inspector.
White said his WVU master’s degree in public health prepared him for the challenges he was to face, but he is not certain why he was selected.
“I had asked [Manchin] one day after he became governor, ‘Why?’ ” White said. “And he said, simply, ‘Gut feeling.’ ”
The first step for White was to stabilize the agency’s finances. He realized the Rescue Squad’s main sources of income, collections from Medicare and insurance agencies, were not as efficient as they ought to be. The Marion EMS would often undercharge for services, he said.
After White revised the agency’s collection policies, the agency began to show profit, Angelucci said. It was just the beginning of White’s influence on the Marion EMS.
White was not satisfied with response times to calls, so he made a policy requiring employees to respond to all calls within 60 seconds. The agency’s new income enabled White to pay for employee training as well.
White sent employees around the nation for special training after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and now the Marion Rescue Squad has the only trained instructor in bioterrorism and radiation terrorism within a region of several counties, Angelucci said.
White also instituted an employee bonus program, which splits a portion of the agency’s monthly income with all of its 48 paid employees, divided up by man-hours worked. In July, the Marion Rescue Squad paid about $52,000 to its employees, Angelucci said. With the bonus program taken into account, he said, Marion EMS workers are now the highest paid in the state.
As a result of White’s policies, turnover has fallen and morale has soared, Angelucci said.
“It’s changed dramatically,” he said. “People are happy to come to work. They’re trained, they know what to do. The attitudes of employees are excellent compared to what they used to be.”
As strange as it sounds, White said, his work is about improving the Rescue Squad’s customer service.
“If we lose sight of what we’re here for, then we’re all going to suffer,” White said. “We have to make sure our absolute first priority is quality health care. If you want to be the best, we have to do the best.”
Angelucci wrote the nominating letter to bring White’s work to the attention of the state’s EMS office. The Administrator of the Year is selected by a loose committee of senior leadership from the state office, the West Virginia EMS Coalition and the West Virginia EMS Technical Support Network, said Jim Sowards, acting director of the state EMS.
“He had done an excellent job and we’re proud to recognize him for it,” Sowards said.
White likes to do his work out of the limelight, Angelucci said, but Angelucci wanted to see him honored.
“He’s the best administrator, I think, that we could have hired,” Angelucci said.
White noted: “What you accomplish as an individual is a result of good teamwork. I’m only one spoke in the wheel.”