LAKEPORT — At a board of supervisors meeting Tuesday, medical and emergency personnel expressed their desire to seek a new emergency medical service program for the county.
County Health Services Director Denise Pomeroy, alongside other healthcare and emergency professionals including Lake County Fire Protection District Chief WIllie Sapeda and Sutter Lakeside Hospital Chief Administrative Officer Dan Peterson, communicated to the board some issues they had experienced with the county’s current emergency medical services agency, North Coast Emergency Medical Services.
Local Emergency Medical Service Agencies often unite multiple counties to provide consistent and improved medical care in a region. While the functions of a LEMSA are diverse, collaboration with hospitals and health officials, patient advocacy, EMS system improvement and medical treatment protocol development are among them, according to the Emergency Medical Services Administrators’ Association of California. LEMSAs also help coordinate patient transfers between counties.
Pomeroy said Tuesday that she felt NCEMS “may not be a good fit for our county at this time,” citing what she said was a “lack of communication” from the agency and an incongruity of medical protocols between NCEMS and the LEMSAs used by nearby counties to which Lake County patients are often transferred.
“While it’s been a longstanding relationship, things change,” Pomeroy said.
She added that the county pays $17,710 annually to NCEMS, and that “For many years we have felt we have not received services that equal that money.”
Fire Chief Sapeda argued Tuesday that NCEMS did not provide enough in-county training for firefighters and other emergency personnel. He said more local training would save the county the expense of sending personnel to Napa and San Francisco, among other locations, to train.
Sutter CAO Peterson said that Sutter Lakeside Hospital “has been frustrated with the service it’s received for a long time,” and that the issues were not with one individual at NCEMS but with a “pattern of service” that Peterson thought was less than ideal.
“I want excellence in our healthcare,” he said. “And in order to achieve that, I feel that we need excellence from the folks that we’re doing business with.”
It had not been determined what agency would be chosen should Lake County drop NCEMS, but Pomeroy said she had been “highly impressed” with Coastal Valley EMS, which serves Mendocino and Sonoma counties.
NCEMS Executive Director Larry Karsteadt was also in attendance Tuesday. In response to the concerns raised, he stated that the communication problems which Pomeroy, Peterson and Sapeda had discussed were “a matter of perception.”
Karsteadt claimed that the majority of the issues raised by Pomeroy and others on Tuesday had not been brought to NCEMS’s attention until mid-2018, and that the agency had done what it could to address the problems.
Karsteadt also argued that NCEMS has brought training opportunities to Lake County, and that despite being based in Eureka, the agency pays close attention to Lake County’s needs.
“We’re a small staff,” Karsteadt said. “Our responsiveness is a matter of perception.”
He noted that NCEMS has served Lake County since 1975. According to Pomeroy, the agency didn’t function as a LEMSA for Lake County until 2012, but she did recognize a longer relationship that preceded that date.
Karsteadt added that should Lake County remove itself from the NCEMS service area which includes Del Norte and Humboldt counties, those counties would lose funding from the state.
“Those two counties would suffer. They’re not rich counties either,” he said.
A recommendation to staff from Pomeroy, which would allow the health department to seek a new EMS agency for Lake County, and which would need approval by the board of supervisors, was postponed for one week.
A meeting of the North Coast Emergency Medical Services Joint Powers Authority, in which District 5 Supervisor Rob Brown represents Lake County, will be held on Feb. 7.
