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Sanford Luverne’s new ambulance garage is ready for use, and a Saturday morning open house gave community members a glimpse inside their local emergency services.
One of the first people there was Luverne’s Gene Cragoe, who last week observed what he calls the fifth anniversary of his second birthday.
“Five years ago I almost died, and these guys brought me back,” he said.
Cragoe suffered a cardiac arrest while driving on Highway 75 in Luverne near the home of local EMT Melissa Sterrett who noticed he was in trouble.
“She saved my brain,” Cragoe said, referring to the critical CPR Sterrett performed until her colleagues arrived with an automatic external defibrillator to shock his heart back into rhythm.
He was one of dozens of local individuals and organizations who supported the fundraising campaign for the new ambulance garage.
“Patient care is advanced by working together as a community,” ambulance manager Harlan Vande Kieft said Saturday, referring to support from private donations, state grants and the Luverne Area Community Foundation.
The $420,000 garage is a relatively nondescript brick building with bays for two ambulance trucks, a bathroom and shower and an equipment storage room.
What it represents for patients, however, is an improved space that allows medical professionals to more efficiently respond to their emergencies.
For example, the old garage is located near the former hospital building (now city hall and Minnesota West) in the middle of town.
“It’s right in the middle of a residential area where kids are running around,” said Jill Johnson, a full-time paramedic with the Rock County Ambulance service.
“We’re trying to get there in our private vehicles and leave in the trucks to respond to a call.”
She said newer trucks have outgrown the old spaces. Overhead doors allow only a half-inch clearance for side mirrors and there’s barely room to walk around the trucks when they’re both parked inside.
The new garage is east of Sanford Luverne near the ER services on an accessible street with designated parking for emergency responders to park their private vehicles while they respond to calls.
Until the driveway is complete, trucks will still need to back out, but they’ll later be able to drive through the building via a roundabout access.
Sterile supplies will still be kept in the hospital, but garage storage space will be used for backboards, tools and other frequently needed items.
The roomy bathroom with a shower is also a necessity.
“It’s for decontamination … We clean up after every call,” Johnson said. “A few weeks ago we were in a cattle yard. Sometimes we’re in hazmat situations, or we go from one call to another and we can’t have bodily fluids from the previous call still on us.”
She said all this allows medical professionals to more efficiently respond to emergencies and improves patient outcomes.
The Rock County Ambulance team has 24 members who respond to an average of 1,000 calls per year.
Vande Kieft said the new ambulance garage is an example of local leaders and professionals pooling resources to benefit the community.
The Rock County Ambulance service coordinates with the city of Luverne, Rock County and Sanford to improve emergency response for those who need it.
“The person who wins is the person lying on the ground,” Vande Kieft said. “He doesn’t care who shows up; he just needs help.”
Rock County Ambulance service by the numbers
The Rock County Ambulance team has 24 members. This number includes:
•14 emergency medical technicians (three in Hills equipped with response equipment).
•seven paramedics.
•three registered nurses who are EMTs trained in hands-on paramedic duties.
The ambulance responds to an average 1,000 calls per year for the past three years.
Using 2018’s total 992 calls, that translates to 28,454 total call hours for the year in 2018, and it breaks down to an average of 37 hours per week per person on the ambulance team.
But for the medics, (one needs to accompany each call) those numbers are much higher.
“Troy Thone had 4,000 hours last year, and that’s not sustainable,” Vande Kieft said. “Luverne is very fortunate to have the ambulance staff that we have.”
As Rock County’s population continues to age, he said these medical response incidents will continue to increase. Seventy-two is the average age of a person needing local ambulance services.
But as the number of ambulance calls continues to increase, the number of responders is decreasing.
“It’s important for the community to understand what some of these people give.”
Of the 992 calls in 2018:
•577 required advanced life support services (at $1,300 per call).
•257 required basic life support services ($1,000 per call).
•363 were transfers from Sanford Luverne to another hospital ($1,000 to $1,700 per call depending on the level of care needed).
•157 were calls that didn’t require transports, such as lift assists for someone who has slipped off a chair, but still required the minimum $300 ambulance response.
“We don’t bill for these calls, but we still have to pay our staff for their response time,” Vande Kieft said.
“That’s what give back … Sometimes I don’t think the community understands how that works.”
He also explained that Sanford often doesn’t recoup the full cost of ambulance services, because for patients on Medicare and Medicaid, the state reimburses only about half.
“It’s a huge story,” Vande Kieft said.
“We’re constantly working to increase reimbursements. … We apply for grants and we’re doing the best we can because we’re an important part of the community.”
Click the link below for a look at the slideshow about the ambulance garage and services the ambulance members provide.