By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Remove "part-time" from in front of "paramedic care."
Effective May 5, Dowagiac Volunteer Fire Department Ambulance Service is licensed as a full-time Advance Life Support (ALS) health care service.
No one's smile could be broader than the only man in the room who remembers the service's humble "load and go" beginnings 35 years ago, retired firefighter Brad Evans.
City Manager William H. Nelson Jr. commented, "I know you guys have put an awful lot of time and effort into this. For my part, I certainly appreciate it, and the city appreciates it because of the higher level of care that can be provided. Substantial work went into this. The community's going to be better for it."
For the past two years the service has been providing part-time paramedic care as licensed staffing allowed.
In recent years, the service has been operating its primary ambulance at the paramedic level as staffing allows.
Since this has been nearly "24/7" for the past year, the largest impact of full paramedic licensure will be seen directly by adjoining EMS providers with whom ambulance personnel work.
Prior to this upgrade in state licensure, the service has only been able to offer Limited Advanced Life Support to requesting agencies.
Today, when outlying ambulance services which are operating at the basic life support level need advanced care for their patients while enroute to Borgess-Lee Memorial Hospital of Dowagiac, they can now request paramedic-level care from the DVFD service, and receive that care within minutes.
Today's call volume for Dowagiac VFD Ambulance Service stands at approximately 1,700 calls per year.
June marks the 35th year of operation of the volunteer fire department ambulance service to all or portions of the City of Dowagiac, Silver Creek, Wayne, Volinia, LaGrange and Pokagon townships - a 110-square-mile coverage area.
Since its inception, the heart of the service has been its volunteer, or on-call, staff of highly trained and dedicated Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Medical First Responders.
In the early 1980s, the service began staffing its "primary," or first out ambulance with fulltime personnel during business hours.
A culmination of training requirements, two-income families and run volume began placing greater demands on volunteers.
To address this issue, in the late 1980s the board of directors decided to staff the first out ambulance 24 hours a day with fulltime personnel.
Additionally, the first out ambulance licensure was upgraded to the Limited ALS level of care - a step between basic life support EMTs and paramedic care.
Bradford said, "It is the goal of this service and its board of directors to provide to the residents of Dowagiac and its surrounding community the best service we are able to provide. This is a strong and vital community, and today we commit to you, our community, to continue to grow with you and to provide emergency care for you to the highest level available to us through the state. We will not stop here. We will continue to try to strive toward loftier goals and more professional and compassionate care.