County creates committee to look at ambulance recruiting

Taylor County needs more on-call emergency medical technicians, particularly in Rib Lake and Gilman service areas.

At the February 10 meeting of the county’s law enforcement and emergency services committee, members approved a request by member Lori Floyd to establish a subcommittee to work on staffing issues with the ambulance service.

Committee chairman Lester Lewis appointed Floyd and committee member Catherine Lemke to serve on the subcommittee after members Ray Soper and Chuck Zenner declined to be on it. Board member Lynn Rosemeyer who represents the Gilman area said she would be interested in serving on it, but Lewis said he wanted to keep it to members of the law enforcement committee. He said he wanted to keep the subcommittee to two members to avoid quorum issues for the main committee.

At issue is the concern about having enough on-call EMTs to adequately provide coverage in particular in the Gilman area.

“There is a big concern with the Gilman area,” Floyd said.

Coverage across the county is provided with a mixture of full-time personnel who are assigned shifts as well as on-call volunteers. The on-call EMTs receive oncall pay and are paid at the time-and-a-half rate by Aspirus for when they are called out to a scene.

Floyd said she did not believe the county needed fulltime ambulance people in Gilman if they were able to get enough on-call people to fill the shifts. “But we don’t have enough people,” she said.

This is not the first time the county has created a committee to look at ambulance staffing. Previously Soper and board member Scott Mildbrand served on the subcommittee and came back with recommendations to adjust wages and cover more education costs.

Soper said that at the time it did more to help with retention rather than being successful in recruiting new personnel.

One of the major challenges in recent years has been the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers in general. Floyd noted in particular the requirement that they have to get a vaccination or have an exemption approved.

Floyd said there are people who want to work in the positions, but who don’t want to get the vaccine or waiver. She said others have raised concern about the amount of orientation and training they would be required to do as volunteers.

Lewis noted that there has been a change in local management of the county ambulance service and that he has gotten the impression that the new supervisor will be better than the previous one in working with the EMTs.

Rosemeyer echoed Floyd’s concerns with the COVID vaccine exemptions, saying she did believe it was consistently enforced and that they lost several good EMTs over it. “I think we need to push back on Aspirus,” Rosemeyer said, saying that she feels there will be negative impacts on people in the community because of the shortage of on-call EMTs.

Aspirus is required to comply with the vaccination/ waiver mandates because it receives reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.

“If Taylor County owned the service, we wouldn’t have to be dealing with that,” Floyd said. She gave the example of Scott Copenhaver of Gilman who previously was with the Taylor County Ambulance Service, but who says his religious exemption was denied and is now working full time for Rusk County for their countyoperated ambulance service based in Sheldon.

According to Copenhaver, he applied for a religious exemption. “I was denied, so I appealed and was denied a second time,” he said.

Lewis clarified that as a county employee in Rusk County, he is not required to be vaccinated. Lewis also noted that he was very familiar with Rusk County’s operation and that they had significant issues of their own, cautioning against using that county too much as an example.

“They are clearly not a fully funded and fully staffed department,” Lewis said.

Rosemeyer described the ambulance situation in Gilman as being “very disappointing” with no coverage on many nights. “We need to fix this,” she said.

Chris Moberg, another former EMT with the ambulance service, left in September 2021 over disagreements regarding the routine COVID testing of only unvaccinated staff members rather than all staff. He said he tried reapplying last April but had received no response from the previous manager.

Rosemeyer said that at this point if there was an emergency in Gilman she would rather drive herself or a family member to the hospital rather than wait for an ambulance to be dispatched from Medford.

“I know the timeframe it takes to get from Gilman to Medford,” Rosemeyer said, citing her previous experience as an EMT in the area. “Sitting when you need emergency care is not acceptable,” she said.

Ambulance service regional director Bob Kirkley of Aspirus recently held a meeting with civic leaders and community members in Gilman to address their concerns. “I think communication in the department has gotten better,” Kirkley said.

“People were happy with the message that went across and were happy with the meeting,” he said, noting that he is open to suggestions and ideas.

Sheriff Larry Woebbeking questioned what direction he should give to dispatchers about who to call out if an ambulance call comes in and there is no service in an area. “It happens quite often,” he said, of Gilman having no coverage and places like Rib Lake being the only available ones in the county.

He questioned if they should dispatch Rib Lake in those cases, or if they should move to dispatch Thorp or another neighboring service.

Kirkley explained that there was recently a change at the state level which allowed for the creation of coverage agreements between services in the case of staffing shortfalls. This is different from the mutual aid agreements already in place for when agencies are on calls elsewhere or need back-up.

Kirkley said those agreements need to be signed and in place to allow for dispatching outside the area. Those agreements should all be in place by the end of June. Woebbeking questioned what they should do though, if there is something very serious and people need help immediately.

“Do what is best for the patient, always,” Kirkley said.

Lewis addressed the suggestion at the meeting that the county take over operations of the ambulance service and not continue to contract with Aspirus. He noted the national cost is $500,000 per ambulance in service which would put the county’s cost to maintain the existing service level on their own at about $2 million a year.

“Tell me where you are coming up with that money,” he said, noting that the state law actually puts the requirement on the towns, villages and cities to provide the ambulance coverage and that in Taylor County this has been done at the county level.

He said communities throughout Taylor County must take part in increasing recruitment of on-call personnel. “Those people are owed a huge debt that can’t be paid monetarily,” Lewis said of the volunteer EMTs who have served over the years.

Floyd said that the county needs to revisit going to the city councils and boards and that the communities need to be put on notice about the need for additional EMTs.

In related action, committee members discussed the need for a formal contract for ambulance personnel receiving additional advanced training to in turn commit to years of services. Kirkley suggested one year for EMT, two years for advanced EMTs and three years for those receiving paramedic training. The county currently pays for the cost of the training with personnel being paid a higher rate for their training level.