January 19, 2005
Community Progress
Page 19
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164 N. Tegner • (928) 684-2202
Downtown Wickenburg
From left to right are Life Line Pilot Dave Caldwell, Flight Nurse
Jason Vastine, Chief Flight Paramedic Brian Hamilton, and Dale
Decker, CEO of Wickenburg Regional Health Center.
Life Line Ambulance
service has settled in
Special to The Sun
It’s been less than two years since Life Line Ambulance took over the Wickenburg
area, yet the company is already making its mark.
It all started March 2003. The Town of Wickenburg asked Life Line to assist the town
with its EMS (emergency medical services). Life Line provides EMS throughout Yavapai
County, which includes the cities/towns of Prescott, Dewey, Kirkland and Skull Valley.
Life Line agreed and put in a temporary station. Then in June 2003, Wickenburg awarded the CON (certificate of necessity) to Life Line.
The company started with three ambulances but quickly realized it needed a fourth.
Soon after, Life Line also hired a full-time supervisor and last month added another station in Circle City. Three crews and one backup are on call at all times.
Currently, Life Line has roughly 30 part- and full-time paramedics and emergency
medical technicians who rotate through those positions. Overall, Life Line has six stations and 140 crews on call to cover 6,000 miles of service area.
Staffing Wickenburg turned into one of the easier parts of taking over the area. A
much bigger challenge was the communication system.
“As you can imagine, we need communication systems that work no matter what,”
said Bill Hagerty, operations manager. “With the mountains it was really a challenge,
especially with the radios.”
So, in 2004, Life Line invested in a complete communications overhaul. For the past
six months, staff members implemented a brand new system, including:
• All new radios and three strategically placed mountain top repeaters, which allows
for almost 100 percent radio saturation.
• Global positioning units (GPS) in all the ambulances to help pinpoint crews’ exact
location
• A new dispatch center with new technology and software to keep operations running smoothly. The dispatch center is located in Prescott.
“The new system has really worked out great,” said Hagerty. “It’s helped us further
our mission to provide the highest quality care and service to community members,
even with the challenges of a remote rural area, which is everything except downtown
Wickenburg.”
Life Line is no stranger to rural EMS.
“Much of Yavapai County is also considered remote rural, so taking over Wickenburg
was an easy transition,” Hagerty said.
The next two challenges Life Line will be tackling in 2005 include building a new station on North Tegner Street (U.S. 89/93) and fixing addresses.
Life Line is working with an architect to design an approximately 5,000-square-foot
facility that will house on-duty crews and vehicles. It will also provide a large training
facility for both the EMS and the public to take classes and brush up on their skills.
Problems include conflicting addresses, houses with no numbers, street names that
have changed or not marked, etc.
“We’re taking an active role to fix the problem by purchasing GPS units, having our
crews identify problems and bringing issues to appropriate authorities,” said Hagerty.
For more information, check out Life Line’s Web site at www.lifelineaz.com
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