EMS changes will avert crisis

Sprawling Flathead County is closing in on 90,000 people spread out across 5,000 square miles.

And the county currently adds a few thousand residents per year.

In the old days, an informal arrangement of emergency services sufficed for most purposes.

But that informal arrangement - "There isn't a whole lot of structure," in the words of county medical director Dr. Rob Bates - is showing some serious strains as a result of our growing population.

Emergency services are varied and far-flung in the Flathead: 19 different fire departments, six ambulance services, four different local law enforcement agencies (with four different dispatch centers) and two hospitals, plus quick-response and search-and-rescue units.

Commendably, representatives of many of those outfits have been meeting regularly recently - first to vent their frustrations with the shortcomings of the current system, and then to come up with solutions.

There's widespread agreement that communication difficulties - in the field, between varying services and between administrative bodies and front-line workers - pose a major challenge to the efficiency of emergency care. And communication problems could have dire consequences for people in need of that care.

With an eye to improving the system, 32 leaders and members of the valley's emergency services mapped out some five-year goals. At the head of that list is to establish some countywide structure with real authority to get things done.

Last week that first goal became more concrete with the proposal of a central board and central directors for emergency services that would have some legal clout to produce better cohesion, more organization and standard protocols for care.

This is a critical first step that seems like it should be able to set emergency services on a path to improvement. Although some people might worry that it's just adding bureaucracy, in this case we perceive it to be adding needed leadership.

Establishing a central command, as it were, seems to the key component that would then enable other goals to be met: overhauling emergency dispatch systems, improving training and bettering community relations, among others.