Empty ambulances: Rural EMS providers facing severe shortage of paramedics

KOKOMO - About 30 times a month, patients come to the emergency room at Rush Memorial Hospital and end up waiting – and waiting, and waiting – sometimes up to 20 hours.

That’s because those patients require medical treatment that the hospital, located in the small, rural town of Rushville, can’t provide, and need an ambulance transport to a larger facility that offers higher levels of care.

Rushville is a community of 6,000 people located about 50 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

The problem is that more often than not, there’s no qualified paramedic available to do the transfer. That leaves the hospital scrambling to convince out-of-town ambulance services to drive sometimes up to an hour to come and pick up their patients for transport.

Carrie Tressler, the hospital’s vice president of nursing who oversees its emergency services, said they’ve been trying to hire a paramedic for two years to do the ambulance transfers, but they’ve not had one person apply for the job.

Read more: https://www.kokomotribune.com/news/state_news/empty-ambulances-rural-ems-providers-facing-severe-shortage-of-paramedics/article_80601764-fd05-11ea-a5fc-afafd7061e2b.html