Four paid employees have joined the staff of a local ambulance service to strengthen coverage during the hard-to-fill weekday shifts.
The Oconto Falls Area Ambulance Service (OFAAS) added a full-time administrative position and three part-time positions to sufficiently cover 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the time frame most volunteers are unavailable.
New part-time employee Carrie Zoeller said she is happy with the change.
“It’s worth it. It gives peace of mind that our schedule is covered,” she said. Zoeller is an Intravenous Technician (IV Tech) and four-year veteran of the ambulance service. Wendy Zoeller, Carrie’s sister, is another part-time employee. Rachelle Reed is a third part-timer, generally working on-call from home.
Kim Magnin was hired as full-time emergency medical services coordinator, effective Aug. 5. She has been a staffer for the ambulance service since 1992.
“I’ve basically been doing the job since 1996, so it made sense for me to continue doing it,” she said.
Zoeller said Magnin has a good understanding of the position.
“Given the fact that Kim is a paramedic, I felt I could learn a lot from her knowledge and years of experience,” she said.
Besides covering the office from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, Magnin is on call on a varying basis, working a minimum of 50 hours per week. Her office duties include payroll, taxes and accounts payable. She is reviewing policies and procedures to update the OFAAS manual and is working to develop new public relation opportunities.
“We want to get out into the community more,” she said.
She plans to meet with school administrators to discuss options for recruiting high school students for Emergency Medical Technician training. Individuals must be 18 to take the certification test. Another community goal is to run clinics at the library or another community location to provide free blood-pressure testing. She also plans to search out grants and cost-saving alternatives.
“We want it to be as cost-effective as possible,” Magnin said.
The ambulance service is owned by the city of Oconto Falls and the towns of Morgan, Stiles, Spruce and Oconto Falls. The addition of one full-time and two part-time employees was proposed to the five partners in June, at an anticipated cost of just over $76,000 annually. Equally divided between the five municipal owners, each would be responsible for approximately $15,000 per year, beginning in 2014, according to the June proposal. In 2013, the five municipalities paid a fee of approximately $25,400.
OFAAS also provides service to the village of Lena, with the cost based on equalized value of property in the village.
Scant daytime coverage was a problem experienced by the OFAAS in recent years.
“We used to have people working other full-time jobs who used to do this as a part-time job,” Magnin said. Individuals now work their regular full-time job and another part-time job to make ends meet, making it difficult to fit in an EMT job, she said.
“Employers are also cutting staff to a minimum and aren’t willing to allow EMT employees to leave work to attend to a call,” she said. “A lot of people also work out of the area and just aren’t available.”
Ron Korzeniewski, who represents Morgan on the OFAAS governing board, said the new hires will provide much-needed coverage.
“The last years we’ve had people unable to perform duties because of their jobs,” he said.
The state requires a minimum of two people per run, or service call. One person must be at the IV Tech level. The other must be at least an IV Tech or an EMT. The OFAAS has 33 attendants including drivers, first responders, IV Techs and EMTs and is licensed with the state at the IV Tech level.
The ambulance service is governed by a board consisting of representatives from each town, one council member from the city of Oconto Falls, and Robert Parisey, the ambulance service director. A consultant analyzed the service earlier this year and recommended adding paid staff members. The part-time employees are limited to 36 hours per week each, with a little leeway to hold them under 40 hours.
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