LUMBERTON — The Robeson County’s Emergency Medical Services Department received high marks during the recent retreat of the Robeson County Board of Commissioners.
“These folks do an outstanding job,” said Commissioner Tom Taylor, who is chief of the Allenton Volunteer Fire Department. “These are great (county) employees… . All of our emergency services work well together and support each other. These are stressful jobs. Only certain people can do them.”
At the retreat in Raleigh, Greg Bounds, the county’s EMS director, updated board members on what his department accomplished during the past year and what will be done to expand and improve EMS services during the coming year and beyond.
Bounds said that he will not be asking the county for any additional personnel or major equipment purchases during the fiscal year that begins on July 1. He said he is currently overseeing a budget of about $5.7 million, much of which pays the salaries and benefits of 68 full-time and 62 part-time employees.
Bounds said about two-thirds of the employees are women.
“It seems that males want to run into burning houses or become policemen,” Bounds said in response to Commissioner Raymond Cummings’ question concerning why there are not more men working in the EMS department.
Bounds said that his department has 18 ambulances to serve the county’s 135,000 people. All but two of the ambulances are fueled by gasoline rather than diesel, a significant cost-savings for the county, he said.
According to Bounds, EMS answered 23,690 emergency calls in 2015. Another 9,475 calls were handled by the county’s volunteer rescue squads.
Average response time in 2015 for emergency calls that required lights and sirens was about 10.31 minutes, Bounds said. In 2014, the average response for similar emergency calls was 10.33 minutes.
Bounds pointed out several accomplishment made by his department in 2015, including: implementing permanent day and night shifts, as well as a three-day weekend schedule, for employees; implementing monthly inspections of equipment and ambulances owned and operated by all franchised rescue squads in the Robeson County Emergency Services System; and the installation of wireless cradle points on ambulances that increase computer speed and allows for a hotspot on ambulances that enable an employee to do electronic paperwork on a laptop while another employee completes paperwork on an I-Pad.
According to Bounds, adding I-Pads for use in reporting patient information has increased the speed in which reports can be completed. He also said that I-Pads help get accounts billed quickly and help receive payments for services rendered on a more timely basis.
“We also have the capability to take a photo of a patient’s cardiac rhythm strip and send it to the hospital,” Bounds said. “This speeds up care for patients having an active heart attack.”
Bounds said his department is involved in continuing education and training improvements for employees, as well as providing the public with EMS-related educational programs and training.
‘One of the big things we are doing now is providing compression-only CPR training,” Bounds said. “We have already trained more than 200 people in this procedure.”
Bounds said that he is proud of the way his employees are efficient and accurate in the way they file individual response reports. He said the state looks at reports EMS personnel are required to file and evaluates them for how many mistakes are made.
“We do well in this area,” Bounds said. “The state average for mistakes in a single report is 2.3, while our county average is only 1.9. This helps me a lot because when I do statistical reports I can draw from our response reports and know the information is accurate.”
Bounds praised the local rescue squads for the assistance they provide county EMS personnel.
“If it wasn’t for the rescue squads, we couldn’t do the job we do throughout the county,” he said. “They are instrumental in helping us do our job in a county with so many square miles and such a large population.
“We are proud of the way our people do their job,” Bounds said. “We are very thankful for what our employees can do, and also thankful for the rescue squads that help us provide services to all our county residents.”
