By Cliff Miller
The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
Copyright 2006 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
COTTAGE GROVE, Wis. — Communities in eastern Dane County are expected to decide in the next few weeks whether they will underwrite a study of forming a single, combined emergency medical services system.
If the answer is yes, it would move that part of the county toward a new level of cooperation in an already-sophisticated regional EMS program that includes not only all 21 existing EMS systems in Dane County but also four in adjacent counties.
Local towns, villages and cities will adopt their 2007 budgets by early December. Promoters of the combined multi-community EMS have asked each of 14 municipalities to include $5,000 or more toward a $40,000-$60,000 study of the merits and demerits of the proposal.
For smaller municipalities, $5,000 is not a small amount in budgets already squeezed by state-imposed limits on property tax levies. Deerfield, for example, is considering cutting back police services by $30,000 to comply with the state limits, so it is hardly surprising that the village declined to contribute to the study -- although the refusal also was driven by other local issues.
In addition, resistance to consolidation in all parts of the county is fed by turf-consciousness, local control issues and long-standing community rivalries and traditions.
Town of Blooming Grove Administrator Mike Wolf, a leader in the combined community EMS movement, said by the start of November, seven of the 14 communities asked to fund the eastern Dane County study had agreed to contribute to the fund. Deerfield and two others had said no and the rest had not yet decided.
The money would pay a consultant to produce an impartial report in six months or less, he said.
*
A new multi-community district: The combined district would own buildings and equipment and employ EMTs and other personnel, with the goal of a more efficient and less costly system than the present separate operations.
While Wolf and his allies avoid flatly promising savings in costs to taxpayers and patients served by a consolidated system, they argue that it may prove feasible to provide services with fewer ambulances, stations and even personnel.
One objective of the proposed study is to measure the potential efficiencies and advantages, as well as to point out disadvantages, according to Wolf and others.
Wolf noted there is nothing radical about the combined operations concept, citing the long-established Deer-Grove system run by the towns and villages of Cottage Grove and Deerfield; Fitchburg’s and Verona’s FitchRona; the six-community Mazomanie-Black Earth area Dane County EMS District 1 and the joint Village of Maple Bluff-Towns of Blooming Grove and Burke EMS district.
“What we’re proposing is not radical or different, it’s just on a larger scale,” Wolf said.
*
The regional EMS system: State emergency medical service officials are considering adopting the Dane County model as the statewide standard, according to J. Timothy Hellebrand, EMS coordinator in the county Department of Emergency Government.
“We’re ahead of the game,” and Wisconsin is ahead of most other states, he said.
The county formed the regional EMS system 30 years ago. Hellebrand said.
His agency, the Dane County EMS Division, provides a host of coordinating and advisory services to the 25 EMS districts in the regional system.
Probably the most important is coordinating communication of emergency calls, under a system designed to send the nearest ambulance with personnel trained for the level of care each patient or emergency requires and alerting hospital emergency rooms to the nature of the crises about to be delivered to their doors.
In what amounts to an electronic triage system, county EMS coordinators use carefully scripted questions to quiz callers and determine whether the patient needs ALS (Advanced Life Support) care or the less intensive BLS (Basic Life Support).
The dispatch center keeps constant track electronically of the whereabouts of all ambulances.
The county system has not always won enthusiastic acceptance from turf-conscious local communities. Earlier this year, the Sun Prairie EMS dispatchers’ union unsuccessfully fought City Council action giving the county EMS dispatch center the responsibility for handling calls from city residents needing emergency help. (City dispatchers continue to handle local police and fire calls.) However, the dispute was resolved entirely within the community and never reached the level of county negotiations, according to county executive spokeswoman Joanne Haas.
Sun Prairie, along with the city of Middleton, also fought the county over who should answer wireless 911 calls. When calls come over telephone land-lines, EMS centers easily trace their origination points. But tracing cell phone or wireless calls requires separate technology.
Sun Prairie reached an agreement that all wireless 911 calls would be routed through the county system early this year. In October, Middleton and Dane County reached a separate agreement that allows for a 90-day trial period in which first Dane County and then the city handle wireless calls, with the results compared before a final decision is made.
Meanwhile, the county has received $867,854 in state grants to enable its dispatch centers to pinpoint the origins of wireless calls, surmounting a significant and growing hurdle.