To heal an ailing system

Emergency medical officials seek more authority to fix coordination woes

One oversight board with legal clout.

One medical director with legal clout.

Everyone legally on the same wavelength.

Those are what Flathead County's emergency medical services will seek from the Flathead County commissioners in a few weeks.

On Thursday, representatives from about 20 emergency medical agencies decided to send a proposed resolution to the county commissioners that - if passed - would boost the legal powers of an existing committee and a medical director to better coordinate Flathead emergency medical services.

Right now, the county's hodgepodge of emergency agencies sort of works, but not nearly as well as it should, emergency officials agreed.

Flathead County emergency services include 19 fire departments, a half-dozen ambulance providers, four dispatch centers, first responder organizations and several other emergencies agencies.

Complicating the picture is that responding agencies provide different levels of skill and equipment for an emergency.

Communications and coordination among the agencies - in planning, training and emergencies - do not mesh well, officials said.

Area emergency officials have created a long list of issues that they think should be tackled. However, they also agreed that a unified framework needs to be in place before they can address specific problems.

Currently, there are three boards and committees that handle pieces of the county's emergency-medical-services picture.

These are the emergency-medical-services committee of the Flathead City-County Board of Health, the city-county 911 board, and a more informal committee of area fire chiefs and other officials.

None have much legal clout to order work to be done countywide on emergency medical issues.

Representatives of emergency agencies Thursday decided that the health board's emergency-services committee - which meets irregularly and has legal control over some funds - should be the oversight body for the county-wide picture.

Also, county emergency medical director Dr. Rob Bates does not have clear-cut authority to make decisions that every emergency service in the county must follow.

Consequently, the emergency officials plan to approach the commissioners with a proposed binding resolution to convert the health board's emergency medical services committee into the public overseer of all of Flathead County's emergency agencies with greatly expanded legal authority.

The same resolution also would expand the medical director's legal authority to make countywide emergency protocol and planning decisions.

"Unless the legal process is put in place that is recognized. … everybody's doing this," said Mark Peck, director of the Flathead County Office of Emergency Services, as he crossed his arms and pointed in opposite directions.

Officials hope that this proposed framework will give them a forum to discuss and debate common issues.

After a draft resolution is written, emergency officials plan to meet again to refine it before asking the county commissioners to pass it - thus creating a structure to tackle other across-the-board problems.

These issues include:

. Spotty communications between units in the field, plus up and down the various chains of command

. Having all services operate under the same standards

. Agencies backing up one another better

. Resolving conflicts between agencies

. Upgrading and consolidating the county's dispatch and radio systems

. Finding more money and more reliable funding sources

. Improving training and better coordination of training

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com