VIDEO: A new $50 billion federal program is giving states the chance to share and develop new strategies to transform rural healthcare across the country. Emergency medical service providers in rural Texas counties have some ideas to help address unique challenges they face everyday.
Michael Furrh is the EMS Chief for both Lavaca and Colorado counties. He oversees a team of about 95 personnel and eight ambulances between the two counties. Located in a rural area between Houston and Austin, the two EMS departments combine to serve an area about the size of 2,000 square miles with roughly 40,000 people.
One of the challenges Furrh’s team faces, similar to many rural EMS teams, is not the volume of calls they receive, but the amount of time each call takes. They are tasked with covering 911 calls on top of transferring patients from local hospitals to higher levels of care in bigger cities. For Furrh’s team, that could be Houston, Austin or San Antonio. “That’ll take an ambulance out of service for four to five hours, even up six to seven, depending on what time of day it is,” Furrh explained.
