Baxter's EMS in need of volunteers to improve response times

BAXTER — Baxter’s emergency medical services could be undergoing some changes in the near future in an effort to increase the amount of volunteers on the department and improve response times to local emergency calls.

Mayor Steve Smith addressed public concern about the EMS services during Monday’s city council meeting.

Baxter’s EMS is contracted with Newton and Colfax, and according to Smith, Newton EMTs have been responding to Baxter more and more recently.

The mayor said he met with Newton Fire Chief Jarrod Wellik, who expressed several concerns he had with the Baxter ambulance crew’s response times and wanted to remove the three-call system it had in place between the two cities.

In the past, Baxter would be paged three times, and if an local EMT didn’t respond Newton would answer the call.

“Some of the concerns their EMTs had were about the way it was set up originally,” Smith said. “Wellik said we can come up with a deal that when Baxter gets called Newton’s going to get called at the same time. And if Baxter has a crew, all they need to do is disregard Newton. Newton paramedics were concerned about too much time being spent in between the first three calls before they finally came up.”

Baxter resident Nancy Foreman, who addressed the mayor and the council Monday about the issue, had a concern about a recent 911 call taking 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive on scene.

“(Baxter) had a driver ready and the driver sat here for 40 minutes and no EMT ever came. Finally they called Newton,” Foreman said.

Baxter’s ambulance crew has nine EMTs, who get paid $30 per call, but the mayor said only six of them respond if they are available. Many of the volunteers have full-time jobs as well as families and are unable to find babysitters when calls go through. Having more volunteers and drivers on the ambulance crew will ultimately increase response times since it raises the likelihood of at least one EMT being available to answer a call.

Smith served more than 18 years as a Baxter EMT and said it can be scary sometimes being alone in the back of an ambulance as the only responder to a call. The department has began looking into ways to increase its volunteer numbers in order to assure Baxter has multiple EMTs responding to calls.

Even though they are volunteers, they still get paid for the time they go out. Some of those moneys are minuscule for the amount of time they put in,” Smith said. “There’s talk about maybe increasing that (payment) or making more training available at a reasonable cost.”

Smith encouraged citizens to volunteer for the department and emphasized that the town’s ambulance is strictly an emergency response vehicle and not a transport vehicle. He also mentioned, in the near future, the policy of Baxter’s ambulance will require the transportation of a patient to the nearest medical center, as opposed to a hospital of the patient’s choice.

City budget

The city council approved the amended 2015-16 city budget Monday night and continued brief discussion about the proposed increase in water rates.

Public Works Director Shawn Fuller said Baxter’s water and sewer prices are comparable to other cities in Iowa, even with a water rate increase for next fiscal year.

“There’s some towns higher than us and there’s some right with us for water and sewer,” Fuller said. “The fact of the matter is these other towns are forced to be in compliance with State of Iowa and the federal EPA. We have done our work. We’re done and our rates are what they are. There’s now a lot of towns in Iowa calling us and checking in with us to see how we went about doing it because now they’re being forced to do it and still haven’t done any work on it yet.”

Contact Alex Olp at aolp@jaspercountytribune.com