EMS A–Z

New toolkit on transitioning to EMS available for volunteer, combination departments

Editor’s note: For more on the Orange Ribbon Report, be sure to check out Fire Chief David Fulmer’s feature in the upcoming March issue of FireRescue magazine.

If your volunteer or combination fire department is considering adding EMS service, your timing couldn’t be better. That’s because the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) just released a report that serves as a toolkit for transitioning to providing EMS.

At the very end of 2008, the EMS Section and the Volunteer and Combination Officers Section (VCOS) of the IAFC released their Orange Ribbon Report, titled “We’re Here for Life: Leading and Managing EMS in Volunteer and Combination Departments.” The report was undertaken to fill an unmet need: “There was a void of information on starting an EMS service within a volunteer or combination department,” explains Chief David Fulmer, vice-chair of the VCOS board and chairman of the task force that created the report. So the VCOS Section asked the EMS Section to lend their technical expertise to create a one-of-a kind document.

“I’m very pleased with the report,” says Chief Gary Ludwig, chair of IAFC’s EMS Section. “The people in the VCOS and EMS Sections who worked on it did a yeoman’s job on this.”

A Jumping-off Point
The Orange Ribbon Report is as comprehensive as possible. Chief Fulmer explains, “Like the other [VCOS Section] reports, this is basically a jumping-off point. It offers areas of consideration and in this case, it’s only as comprehensive as the subject allows. With EMS, every state is different”—in terms of training requirements, legal considerations and more—“so this document provides enough information for a department to head in the right direction.”

Currently available only to EMS and VCOS Section member departments, the Orange Ribbon Report devotes a chapter to each of the following EMS topics:

• deployment—the role and benefits to patient care in pre-hospital 911 EMS response;
• the costs involved in adding EMS to your department;
• common challenges of communication and standardized languages;
• funding avenues and cost-recovery systems;
• legal requirements;
• human resources considerations; and
• quality-management systems.

How detailed is the information? Chief Fulmer offers an example under the chapter on deployment: “There are four varying levels of EMS,” he explains. “There’s first responder, which is basically traveling first aid; there’s basic EMS, which is very restricted in what EMTs can do; there’s an intermediate level which can typically do everything except the most advanced procedures and can’t administer certain medications; and there’s paramedics, who can do about everything under the sun. Now, for someone with no exposure to providing EMS, this information is very key to deciding what level of service they’re going to provide. This document provides some explanation and some guidance on these, including generic training requirements for each as well as what type of apparatus is required or appropriate for each step.”

Any department considering transitioning to providing EMS needs to consider the magnitude of the addition: “The important thing to realize is that EMS is the main activity that a fire department provides, says Chief Ludwig. “For most [career departments], 75 to 80 percent of their workload is EMS. That’s why we thought we’d reach out to volunteer and combination departments about this.”

The Orange Ribbon Report will be available to all departments on the IAFC Web site in the second quarter of 2009. Check www.iafc.org under documents for download for this and other reports.

For more information about this report, check out the March issue of FireRescue magazine.

Jane Jerrard is a freelance writer based in Chicago. If you have a story idea you’d like to share, send it to fire-rescue.comeeditor@elsevier.com.