Floyd County Paramedics

http://floydstraightforward.org/floyd-ems-stay/?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=greenlink&utm_campaign=EMS%20stays

Floyd EMS: Here to Stay - Floyd Straightforward Back in January, I wrote about our plan to review our ambulance services, also called emergency medical services, or EMS, after being approached by Redmond’s president, John Quinlivan. He had asked if Floyd would consider bringing in an outside EMS

Nothing to report on the RFP process other than we know that three vendors have shown interest in a consolidation of Floyd, Polk, Chatooga and Redmond EMS. Redmond employees were advised that after the process takes place they would have to apply for jobs at the new service.

Recently Floyd EMS negotiated with Polk commissioners to place a radio console in Polk 911 to ease dispatching Floyd ambulances on request in Polk County. This has raised many questions with various people regarding Floyd EMS's intentions in the process.

The time frame for the process still appears to be mid-May to June for the process to be completed. The upper management at both facilities are very quiet and will not answer questions concerning the vendors.

https://www.facebook.com/FloydCountySchoolsGA/posts/463279293795518

We would like to have a frank discussion concerning the gridlock that occurred in Rome and Floyd County yesterday. We do not want to belittle anyone nor do we want to directly assign blame to any one entity for this problem. However we must address policy and procedures for school closures by the Floyd BOE.

An extremely dangerous and volatile traffic snarl severely hindered the responses for all emergency responders within the county due to the sudden school closure. Of course it was absolutely necessary for the children to be sent home, however future planning must incorporate disaster planning and an orderly release plan. Further specific protocols for school closures should be instituted and followed consistently. We encourage school officials to meet with first responder agencies to help design and incorporate this plan.

We were lucky yesterday that most accidents were fairly minor and there were no deaths related to this incident. Had they been more severe in nature the inability of responders to move through town expediently would have significantly hindered patient outcomes.

We do thank all of the first response agencies for their professionalism and steadfast resolve to make all of this work yesterday. The schools did a great job making sure no child was left behind and the most of the bus drivers did an exceptional job safely getting the children home in very adverse conditions. Thankfully the very few bus incidents that occurred were relatively minor.

We encourage every citizen to contact your commissioner and let them know the difficulty you had on the streets of Rome and Floyd County yesterday and request that an after-incident-review with recommendations to improve this in the future is completed by the city and county.