Jefferson County receives third ambulance

FAIRFIELD – Jefferson County Ambulance Service received its third ambulance Tuesday afternoon, a major milestone for the service that just began operating as a county entity last October.

Jefferson County Ambulance Service Director Brian Thomas said the new ambulance isn’t ready to put into service just yet because it still needs radios. He’s hopeful they will arrive in the next few days, and then the ambulance can begin responding to calls next week.

Ever since switching to county-run entity and moving into its newly remodeled space at 1600 W. Burlington Ave., the ambulance service has operated two ambulances plus a third emergency vehicle on loan from Libertyville Fire and Rescue.

Ambulance Base Director Judy Heisel said there are times when the department needs to deploy three ambulances at once. For instance, just after receiving the ambulance at 1 p.m. Tuesday, two of the department’s ambulances were out responding to 911 calls, and while they were answering questions from the media, Heisel and Field Training Officer Damien Wimmer had to respond to a third call.

Heisel said having a third ambulance gives the department the ability to more easily transfer patients from the Jefferson County Health Center to other hospitals, such as in Iowa City or Des Moines. She said that if a couple of the ambulances are out on calls, then the department must refuse requests to transfer patients until their call has finished.

Supervisor Dee Sandquist said the new ambulance cost about a quarter million dollars. She said the supervisors were grateful to the City of Fairfield for pitching in $60,000 toward it.

Ambulance officials said this new ambulance was ordered two years ago when the service was run by a trio of local government bodies, which included representatives from the Fairfield City Council, Jefferson County Board of Supervisors and Jefferson County Health Center. Those three entities comprised the Jefferson County Ambulance Service Agency (JCASA). For the prior three years, that agency had contracted with the private company CARE Ambulance based in Iowa City to provide ambulance services in Jefferson County.

During the final year of JCASA’s three-year contract with CARE, the company informed the agency that it needed more money than the contract asked for, and that it was unable to fulfill its obligation to provide two Advanced Life Support ambulances 24/7. Company representatives said they were unable to hire enough paramedics locally, and that they had to resort to hiring expensive traveling paramedics.

Thomas said hiring enough paramedics and EMTs has not been a problem for Jefferson County Ambulance, and he credited his staff and especially Heisel for creating a good work environment. He said the service employs 26 staff, and that it will soon hire two more people. Counting management, the service has 15 fulltime employees. Sixteen employees have paramedic certification.

Thomas said response times to 911 have been really good, and that Jefferson County’s response times rank in the 95th percentile among all counties in Iowa.

The new ambulance is expected to last three to five years, and it will become the county’s primary ambulance because of its low mileage, which is under 1,000 miles. Wimmer said the department’s oldest ambulance is from 2016 and has more than 200,000 miles on it. Because the ambulances are driven so often and at such high speeds, they go into the shop for an oil change and tune-up every month.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com