Some of you may be aware of increased public discourse about our Emergency Medical Service. In an open letter, the Easton Volunteer Fire Company stated that recently they had seen “response times failing to meet an acceptable standard.”
As your first selectman I take this very seriously. First, it is important to understand some context. Easton fire and Easton EMS are both volunteer organizations. The town funds these services.
The taxpayers of Easton fund the EMS service with a budget of $431,000, which. among other things. funds paid staff during weekdays. They work out of a town-owned building. and the town provides their ambulances. They chose the chief of the service with the approval of the town’s EMS commission, and while the commission, by ordinance, is responsible for emergency medical services, operational decisions are made by the chief. Service is provided by volunteers at times not covered by the paid staff.
The volunteer fire department operates on a budget of $1.32 million including the cost of 24/7 paid coverage with two firefighters at all times. The volunteers own their building. The town pays rent for the garage portion of the building. It buys fire trucks for the volunteer fire department. The volunteers chose their chief without town input, and the town’s fire commission is responsible for fire protection in town, but here, too, the chief makes operational decisions. Volunteers supplement the paid staff on calls.
Post Covid there has been a drop-off in volunteerism which seems at this time to have had a greater effect on EMS. As a result, I have been working with them to find more volunteers, including a volunteer to live in the building to bolster overnight coverage.
“Live-ins” had been a longstanding program and is used by other towns as well. The town entered into an agreement with Sacred Heart University, which led to an influx of volunteers. EMS has worked to have more in-station coverage, particularly, because for some reason volunteers for EMS tend to be younger, cannot afford to live in Easton, and so likely live in surrounding towns, or they can be students. We have also looked at expanding the time covered by paid staff. There is a balance between the needed amount of paid coverage and volunteer coverage, which the Board of Finance and EMS are working to resolve.
Back to the concerns addressed in the public, I believe strongly that our town should make decisions based on data. So far, the discussion has been dominated by anecdotes of longer waits for service, so I have tried to ascertain the actual data. When you dial 911 for a medical call it goes to our dispatch in the police station which contacts a police officer, who is the first responder, and EMS. The police officer goes to the scene immediately. He carries oxygen and a defibrillator device (AED). For more serious cases the fire department is dispatched as well. All paid firefighters are EMTs.
The second call is to the regional dispatch center (CMED), which controls all the different public and private ambulance services in the region. They administer what is called “mutual aid,” whereby when one town or service cannot respond in a timely fashion with the appropriate level of personnel or ambulance, another ambulance or crew member can be dispatched from another town.
All towns use mutual aid because there are times when their crews are unavailable, on other calls, or they do not have the necessary level of service. The executive director of CMED will attend our Dec. 5 Board of Selectmen meeting, and you are invited to attend.
I hope he will be able to provide answers to some important questions:
- How often does Easton require mutual aid from other towns (and how often do they provide services to other towns)?
- How do these numbers compare to other towns?
- Does there seem to be a change over time, or are these numbers in the range they have been historically?
We can use this data to guide our planning. We have also met with the directors of the Sponsor Hospital Council of Greater Bridgeport, who are responsible for the quality of pre-hospital care. They advise pre-hospital providers on quality matters in real time and in making sure the organizations that provide care are up to standard. They recognize Easton EMS as the primary provider of care. All provider organizations must comply with their standards whether they are primary providers (EMS) or supplemental responders (fire).
I hope to have their executive director at a future selectmen meeting to explain the qualifications for those who render care. Hopefully, this helps people understand the current situation. We continue to work on making sure our service is up to standard.
