Essentia EMS receives honors

BUHL—Essentia Health announced recently that its EMS team serving Buhl and the surrounding communities has received the EMS Clinical Excellence Award from the Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board (EMSRB).

The team is recognized for providing exceptional clinical care in 2023.

“This award is a credit to your organization, leadership, the involvement of your Medical Director and, most of all, the exemplary care and documentation performed by your dedicated crew members,” said Dylan Ferguson, executive director of the EMSRB is quoted in a news release. “You should be proud of the care that your organization provides to the communities and citizens you serve.”

To qualify for this prestigious distinction, EMS services had to achieve a performance rate of 80% or higher in five or more individual performance measures. There are nine clinical performance measures, gauging things such as response times and proper patient assessments.

“I couldn’t be prouder of the exemplary care our Essentia Health EMS professionals deliver every day to the citizens and communities we are privileged to serve,” Joe Newton, emergency medical services senior director for Essentia said. “We strive to provide the right care to every patient, every time, at the highest quality. It’s rewarding to find out we increased the number of our locations receiving this prestigious award from four in 2022 to six. “This wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work and dedication of our professionals.”

The City of Buhl is about two and a half years into a contract with Essentia for ambulance services under an agreement that automatically renews for a five year period. The city pays $1 and provides an ambulance garage and utilities for the garage, Newton said in a phone interview last week.

“The City of Buhl enjoys a strong and solid relationship with Essential EMS for providing BLS and ALS ambulance services both inside and outside the boundaries of the City and to non-residents as well as residents,” Buhl City Clerk Tony Jeffries wrote in an email earlier this week. “that the relationship and contractual arrangement between the City and Essentia EMS is working well, to the mutual benefit of both parties; that the services provided to the City by Essential EMS is appreciated and ample; and that the City envisions this relationship to continue well into the future.”

At the onset of the contract, the service was basic life support (BLS) and it has since upgraded to a part-time advanced life support (ALS) service. The upgrade allows paramedics with the service to provide advanced level care, Newton noted.

Essentia Health EMS is part of an integrated care team, ranging from professional pre-hospital staff to highly skilled emergency department caregivers, according to the news release.

“We respond to about 13,000 requests for service annually and transport more than 10,000 patients in our communities,” it states.

Essentia maintains nine base locations across northern Minnesota and east central Minnesota.

Essentia’s Buhl base has a service area of 63 square miles in the Buhl and Kinney area, and is currently staffed by 10 emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and seven paramedics, according to Newton.

“We can utilize other regional locations for staffing and such,” he noted.

Essentia staffs two ambulances in Buhl, the service to become more of a regional resource for interfacility transfers, which Newton said is “difficult at best in rural Minnesota.”

“We make sure patients get to the right place at the right time,” Newton said.

At the same time the service provides 911 coverage for its service area, maintaining one ambulance for local calls. The service has mutual aid agreements in place with surrounding ambulance services, following a state requirement.

Like other small ambulance services struggling to keep up with costs, Essentia is currently operating its Buhl base at a loss, according to Newton.

“We have a high, vast majority 911 calls coming from assisted living there—83 percent our patients have Medicare or Medicaid which reimburse between 20 and 25 percent of charges,” Newton said.

Newton said he’s looking forward to legislation being introduced by an EMS Task Force to address issues facing rural ambulance services. The Minnesota Ambulance Association is working on legislation to make emergency response in rural areas financially feasible, he noted.

For all emergencies dial 911.