HOW MANY VOLUNTEER SERVIES USE A PRIVATE SERVICE

[medicdsm]

At the service i volly with we are not allowed to respond to medical calls from 6am to 6pm monday-friday because the city pays a private service to cover these hours.The city says this is because most people who volly work in those hours. Most other members of my volly squad i have talked to about this work early evening or overnights as i do and would like to be able to respond during daytime hours. I was wondering really how many other people who volunteer with either a VAC or VFD have to deal with a situation similar to this.

[itku2er]

I live in a small town we have several paid services and 3 volenteer services. Our dispatchers get who they can as fast as they can to the patient. The voleenteer services always mark on with our county so they know we are avaible when and if a call comes in. So we get paged first.

Fire is different they page the closest department to the scene and if back up is needed then it comes from the neighboring departments.

:angel12:

[crsemt]

You are kind of an exception. The contract was probably put in place because most members work their regular jobs during the day and are not around for on-call. If you have enough to handle the day calls, I would let your community know this, and when the contract expires, they would probably be more than happy to have it covered by volunteers. I am sure the tax payers would.

[PRPGfirerescuetech]

You are kind of an exception. The contract was probably put in place because most members work their regular jobs during the day and are not around for on-call. If you have enough to handle the day calls, I would let your community know this, and when the contract expires, they would probably be more than happy to have it covered by volunteers. I am sure the tax payers would.

Many places in the country are getting away from volunteers because of issues based around drastic decreases in volunteerism across the US.

I must ask, why doesnt your volunteer service begin hiring employees?

[crsemt]

There are 2 of us that work Full-Time during the day. Since you quoted my post I took it you were asking me. The rest of our employees are Part Time, but this was originally a volunteer service. It became paid for the exact reason you mentioned.

[medicdsm]

The service I volunteer with is expecting to go to a full time FD/EMS in the next 5 years so they have hired 1 full time Chief and 1 full time Asst. Chief. The plan on going full time is fairly new so they are wanting as much time as possible to do it. I will give them credit they went out and got a Chief that has transitioned 1 VFD into full time. One of the perks of Volunteering with the service is that you are on the top of the list to become full time if you so choose.

[winyan]

In NW (rural) NJ, we are almost all volunteer BLS. ALS is paid for by the hospitals, I believe. I know they charge the patient when a medic is necessary.

Our troubles with volunteer is during the day work week. It's very hard to get an EMT-B out there, or even a driver, in the hours between 6:00 am and 6:00 pm.

win

[Rezq304]

At the service i volly with we are not allowed to respond to medical calls from 6am to 6pm monday-friday because the city pays a private service to cover these hours.The city says this is because most people who volly work in those hours. Most other members of my volly squad i have talked to about this work early evening or overnights as i do and would like to be able to respond during daytime hours. I was wondering really how many other people who volunteer with either a VAC or VFD have to deal with a situation similar to this.

We have it set up here similar to what you've stated. OUr paid service actually has AT LEAST one truck on duty 24 hours from 6am Monday to 4pm Saturday. Our volunteer service handles the calls from 4pm Saturday to 6am Monday morning. Dual tones are set from 5pm to 11pm on weekdays so that both can possibly respond. Also, if the paid service gets backed up, the volunteer service picks up the slack during the week. Personally I don't like it. I wouldn't mind seeing the volunteer & paid services merged. Still have folks that don't want a career in EMS volunteering, but you also have the "paid" medics on duty 24/7. I've seen other organizations that run like this and I have found that they run MUCH better than the set up we have now.

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