Staffing schedules, uniforms, and ambulance repairs were the focus of Wiscasset Ambulance Service interim Director Joseph McCole’s first meeting with the membership Tuesday, Sept. 8. After a whirlwind personnel change following former Director Roland Abbott’s resignation Sept. 1, which happened so fast McCole said he began work before even signing a contract, all eyes were directed toward the future.
The issues the ambulance service previously experienced, which resulted in Wiscasset contracting with the Tideview Group, a management consultancy firm, to conduct a comprehensive review of the service and recommend changes to enable its survival, are in the past if the membership is willing to put in the work to place them there, McCole said.
“There are a lot of ways this can go,” McCole said of the service’s future. “This is an opportunity to control your own destiny.”
Ensuring the service’s roster is full of active members and creating a stable schedule with a full crew for emergency calls are at the forefront of the ambulance service’s needs, members said.
“We need to stabilize the crews, find out who’s in, and who’s going to dig in,” McCole said. Despite still working with Mid Coast Hospital, McCole said he will be putting in the extra time and extra hours to ensure there are no gaps in the schedule. The service’s membership should do the same, he said.
McCole’s appointment as interim director was announced at the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen’s Sept. 1 meeting, just hours after Abbott submitted his letter of resignation. McCole agreed to serve as interim director for a 90-day period to help the ambulance service stabilize and facilitate the transition to a new director.
A 27-year veteran of the Bath Fire Department and a paramedic with Mid Coast Hospital’s paramedic interceptor program, which provides additional paramedic support to volunteer emergency rescue teams, McCole said work with volunteer organizations and an understanding of trends in the EMS industry are what he can bring to the table.
His role will not be to institute new policies and procedures, or rules and regulations, he said. Those need to be developed by the membership. “You’re as much responsible for the organization’s success as anybody,” McCole said. The one policy McCole said he will ask members to follow is to not play the blame game or point fingers, which he called a cop-out.
The Wiscasset Ambulance Service was created in 1976. For more than 40 years, the volunteer organization has provided 24-hour emergency medical care and transportation to Wiscasset and surrounding communities, with members receiving small stipends for working on-call hours, in addition to medical response.
The service has struggled with recruiting and retaining membership. Staffing a single team, composed of three to four emergency medical technicians, for an emergency response has been a struggle, members said. Staffing a second team to respond to a simultaneous call has been a crisis.
The issues experienced by Wiscasset Ambulance Service are not unique and are shared by many volunteer emergency response organizations, McCole said. Addressing issues as they arise and talking directly to them rather than around them will be the key to their resolution, he said.
Literal housekeeping issues such as laundry and cleaning the facility were discussed. Members asked if on-call hours could be used to do the laundry, which tends to pile up. “Nothing is off the table,” McCole said. He encouraged members to voice their frustrations about small things, such as cleaning the station, before they build into something bigger.
“This is an opportunity to shine and the make the service the way we want it to be,” member Tanya Bailey said.
The ambulance service has the undeniable support of the community, McCole said. Residents voted overwhelmingly in opposition to a non-binding opinion poll that asked if the service should be discontinued in favor of a private ambulance service at Wiscasset’s annual referendum town meeting in June.
Residents also overwhelmingly approved the ambulance service’s budget and request for use of the capital reserve account to make repairs to one of the service’s two ambulances.
With the changes at the department, all eyes will now be on the ambulance service, McCole said. The community has “been there for you, now they want to make sure you’re there for them,” he said.
The membership has been taking steps to move forward. New bylaws have been created for the organization. The $25,000 in repairs to the service’s 2003 ambulance are currently underway at Autotronics in Bangor and are expected to be complete within 14 business days, member Steve Higgins said.
The service has been using a loaner ambulance from the company as the repairs have been taking place. An EMT training course is still in the works for the fall. New uniforms for EMTs were previously discussed and steps will be taken to ensure they are provided.
Trainings, meetings, and requests for appearances at community functions were also discussed.
“There’s a lot of hope for our future,” member Kristin Draper said.
