ESD4 ambulance tops 200 runs in May

By Anton Riecher
For the month of May, ESD4 ambulances responded to 209 emergency runs, reported Allegiance Mobile Health Care District Chief Patrick Boucier during his report to the ESD 4 board of commissioners June 11.
Of those runs, 58 were within Devine city limits, 27 within Natalia city limits and 122 made to unincorporated areas of the district.
At least 11 calls were made from Moore and another two from Pearsall. Only two mutual aid calls were made from ESD4 to other adjoining ambulance districts, Bourcier said.
Of the total calls reported, 142 patients were transported to hospitals. Sixty-seven runs did not result in a patient transport. Ten calls were cancelled before the ambulance reached the scene, and six involved welfare checks.
Medina County emergency service dispatch reported 230 calls to ESD4 units for the same period, Bourcier stated.
“I went through these reports,” he said. “They are a little confusing but I went ahead and added the numbers anyway. I’ll get clarification later.”
Terms and definitions can be the determining factor in the statistical breakdown of monthly runs made by the Medina County Emergency Services District 4 ambulance service.
For example, the difference between a response to a reported fall or to assist a patient transferring from a wheelchair to a bed can be important, said Boucier.
Patients wary of the expense of a hospital visit tend to choose their words carefully when calling for help, Bourcier said.
“We consider a fall an injury, but the call comes in ‘I need a lift assist,’” Bourcier said. “They want to get up off the floor and be put back in their chair. That sounds simple enough but y’all know that normally when we fall, especially when we are elderly, we usually break something.”
In elderly patients, the nervous system does not always process pain the way one would expect, he said.
“Things can be broken and they don’t feel it at the time,” Bourcier said. “So we try to treat these patients not as a lift assist but as a true fall.”
Allegiance Regional Vice President Amanda Baum, on hand for the board meeting, noted that personnel are trained to use a fall check list that asks questions such as “Are you high risk?” and “Did you mean to be where you are?”
“If you’re in your wheelchair and you need help to get in bed, that is a lift assist,” Baum said. “If you meant to be in bed and you’re on the floor that is not a lift assist – that’s a fall.”
The quorum for the meeting consisted of board president Steve Smith and commissioners Patrick DuBose and Tony Martin. Board commissioner Jerry Beck was absent. Due to Beck’s absence, no progress was reported on the Natalia substation project.
One board seat remains unfilled in the wake of Juan Zamora’s recent resignation. It was the first board meeting in the wake of ESD4 EMS Director, Jason Miller’s, untimely death.
Smith briefly outlined his plans to transition the district’s computer operations to its own server rather than storing data remotely, accessing it through a third-party provider.
“It’s going to be ours and we will have sovereignty of that,” Smith said. “It’s not going to be in the cloud on someone else’s computer.”
He also laid out strategy for future development in the district, broken down into three key components – operational, financial and personnel. Long term, the district should be looking at opening one or two new substations within the next three to five years.
“What does that mean for us?” Smith said. “That means we have to look at statistics from the data being collected.”
It also means taking a hard look at the money available for this future expansion, he said.
Smith also noted that work was needed on the contract relationship between ESD4 and Allegiance Mobile Health.
“We were in the process of developing the contract compliance program and we have not implemented the quarterly contract review,” Smith said.
Smith said he wants to meet with Bourcier and Allegiance management to “tweek” the contract to make sure both sides are getting what is being asked for.
No action was taken by the board following a closed executive session to discuss personnel and property acquisition, Smith said.