Time for MAST to tighten belt

[Diazepam618]

Who's going to go to school for to years and work for $12.00 an hour?

[akroeze]

Who's going to go to school for to years and work for $12.00 an hour?

With increased education comes increased wages.

You have to have the increased education FIRST before the wages go up.

[Dustdevil]

You have to have the increased education FIRST before the wages go up.

Careful, Al. You're going to blow this guy's mind with talk of things he cannot fathom. After all, it's never been that way before, so it can never possibly be. :roll:

[Arkymedic]

Just about everybody in Arkansas goes to a community college based program. We also do it for less than 12/hr.

Who's going to go to school for to years and work for $12.00 an hour?

[spenac]

Wow even us uneducated desert rat Texans get nearly $20 an hour for doing 911, and have no ties to fire. If your wages are low everyone needs to walk out if they refuse to pay a liveable wage.

[WolfmanHarris]

Who's going to go to school for to years and work for $12.00 an hour?

Lord knows I wouldn't. That's why I went to college for two years for $30.00+. And that's BLS. I'm lucky that providers before me didn't fight education standards and allowed the increase of education from months, to one year to two years and brought us where we are now.

[AnthonyM83]

LA County FD is not hurting financially and is a great model for county/city EMS, they do not charge for there services directly, and allow the private ambulance companies to bill the patient.

But they suck as far as actual medical care unless I am confused that is our primary concern.

well we all suck to some degree I mean we just follow the protocol of an MD. but I thought MAST, and the city if Kansas City are trying a budget thing.

OMG, did you really just say that?

*Takes gun and shoots himself in the mouth*

HOLY HELL.

NO, no, no. We suck ROYALLY. From what I can tell and hear, we're bottom of the barrel. We let people die daily. We're pseudo EMS. Both because of our protocols, but also the embarrassingly shit standard of care provided by so many (of course, not all).

And part of the we reason we're given such crappy protocols is fear of incompetence (and with good reason, we see it daily).

NO ONE who gives a damn about their citizens or family members who live in the district should copy LA County.

People are already discussing copying our removal of pediatric intubation due to a flawed studied. Our protocols are similar to what other systems had in the 80's/90's. They're discussing removal of adult ET now. Wanna copy that, too?

Copying a system that's considered crappy isn't a good way to be successful. And FD, private ambulance, certain paramedic schools, dept. of health, all together play a role.

[Just Plain Ruff]

Now Ant, I'd hate to hear how you truly feel about this issue.

[spenac]

http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1052778.html

Fire is still trying to lie to the people of KC and the news is being influenced to back them. Fire is getting much more air time for their side than MAST is getting.

[CivilDisobedience]

http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/1052778.html

Fire is still trying to lie to the people of KC and the news is being influenced to back them. Fire is getting much more air time for their side than MAST is getting.

Part of the issue is that our union, IAFF Local 42, has sent out an email to members threatening them with retribution if we have any public dissent on the issue. So the news can't interview anyone without risking reprisal. Don't take my word for it. Here's what the union sent out in a letter to members:

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/3943

I'd like to tell you on the record who I am and what I do at MAST, but I can't because the union will take money from my check. I do work for MAST, and have for >4 years. Nobody here understands what is going on. There's some supporters of consolidation with the fire department, but there's a lot of people who just won't sign some union-sponsored petition without having a written plan.

We asked for a written plan, but the response from the union reps was, "We're working on it." Right now, our jobs are secure. But I KNOW they won't be as secure with KCFD. My EMT friends at work are at the highest risk of layoffs. Everyone that works in the stations for KCFD is an EMT. How hard would it be to fire all the MAST EMTs and put cross/trainined KCFD EMTs in the driver's seat?

There's been so much threats and intimiation going on at work. They drag around this petition and browbeat people so sign it without any facts. If you DON'T sign it, like if you say, "Well, I want it in writing what the plan is" your name goes on a black list. So if/when we get rolled into the KCFD machine, I could see them trying to find a way to kick out anyone that wasn't a cheerleader.

It's a case of when unions screw their employees. Everything was rolling along great for the past few years until this happened. There's so much political back door dealings that I know this has nothing to do with cost. It has to do with who got paid off. I used to tell people that MAST was a great place to work. But now I tell people to steer clear with how awful it has become thanks to some aggressive and hateful union tactics. It's pretty sad when managment, who is constantly villified by our union, is more honest and reliable than the people we're paying $1,100 per YEAR to as our union dues. That's $1,100 per employee, per year. It's hundreds of thousands per year just at MAST. And this is what they do to us? Take our company out from us?

I used to support my union reps. But they've forgotten everything in the past and turned it into a vindictive smear campaign. There's people at work who won't talk to each other over this.

All they had to do was put it to a vote. Never happend. Produce the numbers on the petitions to support their claim of some massive majority. They won't.

KCFD requires residency in Kansas City, MO. 60% of us live outside the city. Try selling a house these days. See if you get anything for it. Put that in writing. Put the NO JOB LOSSES in writing. They can't. I used to be an idealist when it came to unions. I got burned so bad on this one. It's not even that I don't support changes to MAST. But I support remodeling, not a damn demolition and smoking crater left of a company.

The fire guys don't want to run EMS calls. They're fire fighters. They hate EMS. They didn't get into fire to run EMS calls. I can't blame them. They've been unusually silent on this issue. I suspect in part because they've been told to shut up too. They'd better get to liking the "penalty box" or "Meat Wagon" as they call the ambulance, because we run 85,000 calls a year. It's going to be a long, hot, summer with lots of your urban bread and butter calls.

Anyway, that's a view from the trenches. I know not all unions are awful. But ours is pretty crummy.

ok, MAST is a pretty darn good service. Has it's idiots and doofus's but don't we all?

When you have a fire department like Kansas city that sends a rescue truck or a pumper to every medical call be it a fractured leg to a cardiac arrest you have a fire department that justifies it's existence based on EMS calls rather than fire calls.

I think a good service to model the system after is the Med-Act system in the Johnson County Fire District #2 where they only run on life threats such as chest pain, short of breath and motor vehicle accidents. For simple falls and broken hands etc. they do not run on.

But when you have a system that sends a fire truck on every single medical call except for transfers then you have a department that justifies it's existence on 98% ems calls and 2% fire calls.

Mast runs about 250 or so calls a day (my numbers may be off a little bit) of those calls 150 are emergency calls. For each of those emergency calls you get a fire truck.

KC FD runs maybe 1 house fire every week (maybe more on a given week) and 3-10 other types of fire calls per day, then you see where your resources are going every day.

This is not entirely correct. We use EMD, which sucks. Everything "Code 1" like chest pain, SOA, long fall, imminent birth,cardiac arrest, etc...gets a pumper AND ambulance. Code 2 and Code 3 calls do not. So KCFD responds MAYBE 10-20% of the time. We did 350 calls the other day, but average about 280-300 as it warms up. More than 50% of the time, we beat fire to a scene. We did it with fewer trucks, we transport, and we provide on-scene care. It takes some 38+ stations to cover a smaller area than us, they have at least a 4 person pumper, but more often a 5 person pumper, truck, and in 3 stations a 7-person "rescue" truck. Those things are freaking hugely awesome, and great for KCFD, but medical trucks they're not.

I know the inner city guys HATE ems calls. Everything goes code 1 because of the "Is your breathing normal" question is always a "No." Boom, code 1, short of breath. Send the pumper at 3 am. So they run their tails off for no good reason. It's MAST's own fault as they chose EMD instead of opting for what we used to have, called "common sense."