The COVID-19 pandemic has put a strain of sorts on Lifeguard Ambulance Service – the only ambulance service in Lamar County – as emergency medical technicians are putting in extra work transporting COVID-positive patients to health care facilities.
During his monthly update to the Lamar County Board of Supervisors last week, Lifeguard EMS Chief Ben Sones said the process involves a lot of decontamination of the ambulances after each call, which temporarily puts units out of service during that time. In addition, hospital wait times have increased greatly.
“I’ve had one truck that had to wait two hours at (University Medical Center) before they could get a bed; another one had to wait five and a half hours before they got a bed at UMC,” he said. “That seems to be the biggest problem, is that hospital is overloaded, and a lot of our transports have to come further.
“(Merit Health) Wesley had one the other night going to Atlanta; that was the closest hospital that was accepting patients. We were able to fly them out, so that saved us the trouble with that.”
Many COVID-positive patients also are coming from out-of-town areas such as Kosciusko, who then have to be transported back to that area.
“So that takes that unit out of service for a period of time while we’re doing that,” Sones said.
For the month of June, Lifeguard Ambulance saw 433 requests for service and a total of 321 transports.
The average response time to urban areas was 10 minutes and 55 seconds for non-emergencies and 9 minutes and 50 seconds for emergency calls. For rural areas, the average response time for emergency calls was 14 minutes and 31 seconds, while non-emergency response time was 14 minutes and 55 seconds.
“The majority of calls for the month of June were medical, behavioral and shortness of breath, which increased tremendously with the COVID stuff going on,” Sones said.
As far as training, Lifeguard staff completed a CPR class with the Northeast Lamar Fire Department.
Lifeguard also obtained accreditation with the American Heart Association to be its own training site.
“So we can do all of the classes without assistance from anyone else at this time,” Sones said. “We also continue to do physical agility tests with all our employees; we’re about two (employees) away from having it completed.
“Currently, I am down one EMT and one paramedic – those positions with be filled by the 8th of August. I also have one paramedic out with COVID and I have one in the ICU with COVID.”
