Boyd Healthcare Services locate ambulance in Roodhouse
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One of Greene County’s two ambulances sits at the Roodhouse Fire Department ready to go out on a call. On May 26, Boyd Healthcare Services established a base of operations at the Roodhouse Firehouse until the White Hall Clinic, which is due to start construction sometime in June, is completed. Data shows that around 75 percent of ambulance calls are from the North Greene area and having an ambulance in this area will cut response time by more than 50 percent. (Carmen Ensinger/River County News)
By Carmen Ensinger
It has never really made much sense to have an ambulance service, meant to service the entire county, located in the southernmost part of the county and last year Boyd Healthcare Services set about addressing this issue.
While many ambulance services are privately owned, Greene County’s ambulance is a joint venture between Greene County and Boyd Healthcare Services. The County purchases and owns the ambulances, but Boyd operates the ambulance service and employs the crew.
Greene County Ambulance Service currently have three ambulances that have all operated out of Boyd Hospital where both the ambulance and crew have been located.
Last year, Boyd purchased land located across from the new Bunn location, the former location of John’s Pizza, to construct a new clinic that will also be capable of housing an ambulance and its crew to service the northern part of the county.
However, with construction of this facility still several months down the road, until that time, the Roodhouse Fire Department graciously donated the use of their building on the edge of the city for the use by the ambulance service.
So, beginning May 26, Boyd Healthcare Services began servicing the northern part of the county from their new Roodhouse location.
“When we took a look at the data and saw that 75 percent of our ambulance runs were in the North Greene area, it was obvious we needed to do something to improve our response time in the northern part of the county,” Director of Marketing Karley Tucker said. “The data showed it and we heard it consistently from the community.”
With plans for the White Hall facility already in the works and no specific start date for construction, Tucker said when the offer came in from Roodhouse, they jumped on it.
“Roodhouse Fire stepped up and offered the space to our EMS team,” Tucker said. “And, while waiting for our White Hall Clinic to be built could be an additional six plus months, we couldn’t pass up an immediate opportunity to station an ambulance and crew there now to start serving the community better immediately.”
While there have typically been four crew members and all the trucks stationed at the hospital 24/7, there will now be two crew members at the hospital and two at Roodhouse, 24/7 and one truck at Roodhouse and the other two at the hospital.
On its first day of operation in Roodhouse, they received nine calls in North Greene alone with neighboring communities picking up two additional runs while they were on transfers.
Tucker said locating the ambulance in the northern part of the county will greatly reduce response time.
“This will greatly reduce our response times by more than half of what they were – from 20 minutes to 5 and from 10 to 11 to 6 to 7,” she said. “It really will be incredibly impactful for North Greene residents in an emergency.”
Tucker said that Boyd Healthcare Services hopes to break ground on the new White Hall Clinic sometime in June.
