By Bob Shiles
The Robesonian
LUMBERTON, N.C. — The average response time for Robeson County’s Emergency Services ambulances continued to decrease last year, a trend the county’s Emergency Medical Services director says has been the norm since 2008.
Greg Bounds, who heads the county’s EMS Department, told county commissioners last week at their annual two-day retreat in Wilmington that since 2008, the average response time has dropped 4.18 minutes, from 14.62 minutes to 10.44 minutes.
“This is a whole lot of time when someone is severely hurt or sick and waiting for an ambulance to arrive,” Bounds said. “You can save a lot of lives in that time. Better yet, in that amount of time an ambulance can arrive to a call before the situation gets bad enough to have to save a life.”
Bounds attributes the improving response time to two major factors: three municipal rescue squads — Pembroke, Red Springs and Lumberton — are now manned with paramedics, and a computer-aided dispatch system is used to send the closest county ambulance to a call.
“Having local rescue squads now meeting paramedic status helps keep more ambulances available for calls,” Bounds said.
Although they don’t have paramedics, Bounds said that there are six volunteer rescue squads that also respond to emergencies throughout the county. They are in St. Pauls, Parkton, Maxton, South Robeson, Fairmont and Rowland.
Currently, there are seven full-time county EMS ambulances that serve the county. There is also an additional peak time ambulance that operates from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Full-time ambulance service is also provided around the clock by the three municipal units with paramedics, meaning there are always at least 10 ambulances with paramedics aboard to respond to emergency calls, Bounds said.
Only two towns, Fairmont and Rowland, share a county EMS ambulance. The ambulance is based in Fairmont during daytime hours and in Rowland at night.
“It would be good if these areas could have their own dedicated ambulances,” said Bounds, “but we (county EMS) would need another crew of eight people to do that.”
According to Bounds, county EMS ambulances last year responded to 24,359 calls for assistance. About 17,000 of them resulted in transports to hospitals and other medical facilities.
Adding the calls received by Lumberton, Red Springs and Pembroke, a “little over 33,900 calls” were responded to last year by rescue units certified at the paramedic level.
“It’s very challenging to deliver emergency services in Robeson County,” Bounds said. “But we all work together.”
Bounds said that Robeson County is “very, very busy” when it comes to 911 calls.
“There are several reasons for this,” he said. “Robeson County has a lot of land area and a large population. There’s a lot of poverty and a lot of people don’t have health insurance so they use the emergency room at the hospital for their primary health care.”
Bounds also emphasized that there is a “lot of sickness” in Robeson County. He cited a recent study ranking Robeson County 97th in health out of 100 counties in North Carolina.
Bounds said that “only education” is going to help reduce some of the health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and emphysema, that are found in high numbers in Robeson County.
“We have to take accountability for our own health,” he said.
Bob Shiles can be reached at 910-416-5165.
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©2015 The Robesonian (Lumberton, N.C.)