MONTICELLO – Last Thursday, Sullivan County EMS/9-1-1 Coordinator Alex Rau updated the Legislature and the public on the results of the EMS Fly Car program through its first eight weeks. 

This update came during this month’s Public Safety and Law Enforcement Committee meeting of the Legislature and highlighted the success of the county EMS system thus far – which includes a 15-minute improvement to response times for emergencies.

Rau reported that there were 516 Fly Car dispatches through the first eight weeks, beginning September 16. 

“Those dispatchers are generally for mutual aid, so if an agency can’t get a crew, we will dispatch the county unit to come and provide mutual aid,” Rau said, “in first response until an ambulance from another area can get there.”

Rau reported that he would also have an update on the subsequent three weeks in the near future. He also said that they handled three cardiac arrests that had ROSC, which stands for Return of Spontaneous Circulation, meaning they got their pulses back.

“One of those calls was here in Monticello, it was a difficulty breathing,” Rau said. “Our fly car got there and as they walked in, the person went into cardiac arrest. They started immediate CPR, ambulances got there and two weeks later, the patient called the 9-1-1 center looking for her glasses because she lost her glasses.”

Rau also said that the county EMS system together with local agencies, has delivered one baby already, which he said they are very happy about as well. 

Rau also noted that during the first three weeks, there were about 40 calls where the county EMS crews jumped onto a local ambulance corps and they were able to complete the call without having to call mutual aid. 

“So we’re staffing or helping staff some of the local volunteer agencies,” he said. “It’s kind of doing everything that we anticipated it doing. We’ve shaved time off of our response time, we’re helping the incumbent agencies crew; whether we are providing a driver or EMT for them, we’re still helping get that patient to the hospital as quickly as possible.”