We’ve heard from multiple North Country EMS squads about the difficulties they face. In Lewis County, the head of one ambulance company thinks joining all the county’s squads together could be the answer. Lewis County Search and Rescue Chief of Operations Josh Levesque says emergency medical services in Lewis County are in crisis.
Levesque gave a presentation to a county committee to highlight the need for personnel. He showed stats of declining medical first responders statewide, leading to slower response times. Levesque says a solution to both is to zoom out. “How can we get all parts of the county repetitively, successfully, and what I proposed is a county-wide system,” he said.
A county-wide EMS system where all EMS personnel would be part of the same organization in Lewis County, Levesque says, would allow first responders to work from out of any rescue squad in the county, cutting down on response times. “When you have a paramedic in a township that is not affiliated with Lyons Falls, they cannot get into the Lyons Falls ambulance and perform at the paramedic level,” he said. He says his proposed uniform approach would help bring more job benefits to employees, hoping to make EMS in the county a long-term career choice. “Within this plan was to open up and extend out the pay and benefits for staff,” he said.
Levesque believes that Lewis County Search and Rescue would be the organization to make a county-wide system a reality. He’s asking for $3.5 million from the county, which would help cover the costs associated with the proposal, which includes training, maintenance, repairs, and more. “I wrote a budget that would be a sustainable model for a countywide system, which would be 4 ambulance staffed at all times. It has two central, one north and one south. The recommendation from lawmakers is for an outside entity to conduct an EMS study in the county.
