Another Hospital District Mirage

by George Gramlich,
News and Commentary
The critical issue of not having a 2nd Custer County EMS (CCEMS) ambulance with a qualified crew reliably available still plagues Custer County (CC) and its citizens. Not to mention that the Clinic has NO doctors. (See below.) This problem has been with us for a long time and has been quite visible for the last seven years or so.
It was supposed to have been solved with the large EMS mil levy ($280,000) voters approved in 2014 but that has NOT happened.
After reading multiple incidents on the daily Custer County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) Incident Report and listening to them on the scanner, the Sentinel reached out to the Sheriff’s Office (SO) and asked if there were any statistics available for times when a 2nd CCEMS crew was needed and called and was NOT available. It turns out that there was. The SO was gracious enough to compile a spreadsheet from 1/29/18 to 6/12/18 showing the cases where someone in Custer County needed an ambulance crew while one was busy on another call and CCEMS could not provide the 2nd crew. To say the least,it is very, very alarming.
In a four-and-a-half-month period, FIFTEEN TIMES CCSO Dispatch requested a 2nd crew and CCEMS was UNABLE to answer those calls. In those cases, thankfully, Deer Mountain EMS was able to send their primary or SECONDARY ambulance to help CC out. On at least one call, Flight for Life was also called as it was uncertain if Deer Mountain could make it in time. (Flight for Life would have caused the patient to incur an enormous bill, of $10,000 to $20,000!)…

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