Area EMS crews finally have an 'advocate' with new supervisor position

Chris Adams stopped at Point of Honor to check on emergency crews looking into a report of smoke in the gift shop.

A few minutes later, he was at a store on 13th Street checking on an electrical short, and then he was at a house off Rivermont helping paramedics revive an elderly man having a diabetic emergency.

Adams, Sam Bryant and Sean Regan, all captains with Lynchburg Fire and Rescue, occupy newly-created positions as supervisors of the emergency medical personnel.

This supervisor position, an advocate for the medical side of emergency services, is standard in larger departments, Fire Chief Brad Ferguson said. It used to be that fire departments fought fires and rescue squads responded to medical emergencies, but now Lynchburg’s emergency responders are trained in both.

Up until last week, medical personnel did not have a direct 24-hour supervisor or advocate.

“It’s an all-inclusive deal,” Adams said. “We are here to be advocates for the EMS providers in the city of Lynchburg.”

The new positions give responders on the scene a voice, an extra set of hands and a pair of eyes, said Adams.

“Emergency medical services has taken a lot of our department,” said Ferguson. “The majority of what we do in this department is medical.”

About 80 percent of the departments’ calls are medical, Adams said.

“It is an EMS department that fights fires as opposed to a fire department that does EMS,” said City Manager Kimball Payne.

The initiative for the new positions came from Ferguson, who has a strong background in emergency medicine, Payne said. The topic has been on the table for years.

Ferguson transitioned some existing positions to create the supervisor jobs without adding to the fire and rescue budget.

He likened the supervisors to battalion chiefs who supervise fire scenes. Their job is to be an advocate for the paramedics and emergency medical technicians in the field and for the patients.

Capt. Sam Bryant said he’s not sure what to expect in the new position.

“There will be situations that come up that we don’t even know of yet. It can morph into something completely different. There’s a lot of flexibility and a lot of responsibility.”

The supervisor’s shift starts with roll call. That’s when Adams reviews the calls from the last shift he worked. Some days that can be as many as 60 reports. He’s looking for problems, or ways calls could have been handled more efficiently and effectively.

From there, Adams hits the streets chasing calls.

On a recent Friday, Adams hopped to a chest-pains call shortly before noon. After checking to make sure the medics had everything they needed, he walked up to the front door to check on the woman’s elderly mother to make sure she would be all right while her daughter was at the hospital.

He helped emergency crews get a pulse back on a woman who had almost drowned, worked with EMS providers as they used medication to revive a man in a diabetic emergency and stopped at a minor car crash on Fort Avenue to check on the two women involved.

Adams took care of a computer problem at the hospital that tied up one medic unit because they couldn’t print paperwork.

He juggled an afternoon where for a few hours every medic unit was tied up on calls. He also dealt with a complaint from a medic unit after a local nursing home called for a transport, but left the crew waiting while the elderly person finished eating his meal.

Adams has to balance the resources.

“That’s what we haven’t had in the past,” Adams said. “You’ve seen how much stuff people told me about that needed following up on. We didn’t have a consistent system of following up on these things. It hasn’t been handled on a consistent basis as now.”

Battalion Chief Ricky Bomar said he believes this system will help improve the emergency medical response in the city.

“I see them as being an advocate for EMS,” Bomar said. “It’s an advocate for the medics. It’s additional eyes and hands. It’s a work in progress. There will be bumps in the road.”

Curry Rice, captain of the B shift at Station 8, said one of the biggest benefits will be in public relations. Emergency responders have one chance to get it right and they are so focused on saving that life, that they have little interaction with the public, he said.

“They can interact more with the nurses and other EMS agencies, the hospitals and whatever. … These guys present a picture of what we do. We’ve been talking about this type of thing for a long time. They interact more with the public. I think it will be a positive.”

The three men have years of experience in the field and two are flight medics with the Virginia State Police’s MedFlight III based at the Lynchburg Regional Airport.

“I always thought we needed a position like this,” Bryant said “It’s another tool in our toolbox. We have some low-hanging fruit, some things we want to make better.”