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Minutes 02/26/1987 EMPLOYEE ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEETING February 26, 1987 Pat Hedrich asked everyone to have their names in if they want to run for the Employee Advisory Council before the second week of March so it can be voted on. She will put out a memo on this. Pat Hedrich inquired about routine transports during early morning hours. She asked if anyone knew of any problems. Marty advised they are still calling for routine transports at six and seven o'clock in the morning. We are looking at a communications revamp of our entire system. Doug is working with Motorola and looking at an option since MED 9 is in the console at the Sheriff's Department, of setting up two seperate repeater sites around the county. One in the Immokalee area, and one around Carnestown and 41 . VC1 is the idenity that will be used for MED 9 from this point forward. Probably within the next 18 months to 2 years we will be going into full operation on VC1, which means your VHF portables that you are currently carrying will not be a part of our system any longer. MED 7 will still be your primary MED frequency. We also have MED 6, that can be used if necessary for hospital purposes. Every ambulance in this system within the next 90 days will have its VHF radios set up with the same set of frequencies with exception of number 10 which has the VHF micor. EMS Channel 1 frequency will have the private line added to cut out the East Coast. The MED radios will be set up to where if you tranport out of county you will be able to select Dade County or Broward or Palm Beach or Pinellas or Lee County and actually talk to them by selecting the appropriate PL. All we have to do is change a prong on the radios. Just for your information, Physio Control considers the EKG modulators, which are $450.00 each,an expendible item. Doug Greenfield has been authorized by the Dept. of HRS to do a statewide EMS system survey. It has 17 sections. He will ask just about everything imagineable about what makes their system tick, what things they do inhouse, what programs they have, personnel, experience, training, etc. If you would like to know specific things that are happening in the State of Florida, write it down forward to him. This will be funded and mandated by HRS. March 10, 1987 Page 2 Rainex is a treatment for exterior windows and mirrors on vehicles. We now have it in stock. He will issue 1 bottle per station so each vehicle can be treated now. Then, there will be no more issued to stations. In the future, as vehicles rotate through 507, each will be treated. Armoral is now in stock. We will issue one regular bottle to each station and Sally will refill when she makes rounds. Doug has directed Sally to buy truck soap. We have been out for several weeks. We are in the process of beginning the budget for 1987-88. Some of the things we looking at is the request to consider purchasing, outfitting and equipping another EMS station. The area we are looking at is Park Shore. He will meet with Sandy Taylor of Real Property to help him work on square footage, property, financial assessments for that particular purpose. He doubts it will be approved because the budget is so tight and we have the growth management plan that is facing everybody. He is also looking at funding one medic to work on the EMS helicopter. He is also looking at another 3 Field Paramedics. If you have an idea that is cost effective, etc. please let us know through the chain of command. Doug is looking at replacing one unit next year which will be truck 10 with another Type II and he's looking at refurbishing units 1, 3 & 4 to be diesels. When talking about refurbished, they get a new chassis, new wiring harness, and repainted. Any cabinets or internal upholstry, floor, etc. will be redone at that time if need be. That will be accomplished during the next fiscal year. Everglades City has a petition going around right now to fund an ALS unit from the county. Doug's looking at recommending some type of a single EMT paid process on that BLS unit. In other words the driver could still be volunteer, but they would have two or maybe three paid EMTs. The process Doug is recommending is instead of paying three EMTs poorly with no benefits, he is recommending they pay two EMTs well with benefits. They will not be county employees. They will still be a private agency and that is the difference. They could work two eight hour shifts in a row and then have two days off. Essentially you work 8 to 5 and just carry the pager for the rest of the day. They have done this in Highlands County for almost 10 years with their ALS system and they love it. This could work well for that community. As far as Paramedics, Doug recommends they take three of Ochopee's Fire Department personnel, send them to paramedic school and make them paramedics. If they have an ALS call, the Ochopee medic rides to the hospital. They would be county employees. Our Medical Director could have them under him and Doug could control training, staffing, and equipment to keep everything standardized. Doug Greenfield or Neil Dorrill has to OK the helicopter to fly at night. If we have other resources, we use them instead of the March 10, 1987 Page 3 helicopter. The helicopter does not fly at night unless it is a MCI. This whole organization will be inserviced on this. For approximately 4 years Doug has been involved with the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS). He is in the process of getting supervisory staff and above trained in that same management style. NIIMS is a multi-jurisdictional disaster management format. It got famous during the West Coast California fires that blew from one jurisdication to the next and you have a different incident commander every afternoon to deal with everybody. One of the problems NIIMS identifys is vehicle, equipment, and personnel identification. You need to be unique and consistent from region to region. There are two options identified in NIIMS. You have two dispatch options for identifying personnel equipment, etc. What Doug is looking at is TEXT DISPATCH. It is not what the current fire service has done in Collier County. However, we are most probably going to go through a complete system identity change. It will probably take place within the next three weeks. It will require considerable changes in dispatch centers as far as station and vehicle identities, in the format for data processing for computer data. Doug wants his vehicles to align with their zones for one thing as much as possible. Secondly, he wants to go to text for vehicles so no matter who is incident commander they understand what they are communicating with. Example: An ALS unit would be referred to as a medic unit. Helicopter would be referred to as an air unit, a BLS unit would be referred to as a tech unit. The only other thing is administrative, including the Medical Director, which would be referred to as MEDCOM and be assigned a number. Example: The unit known as 501 which is in Zone 1 will become Medic 1, the unit that is in Zone 2 which is East Naples will become Medic 2, the unit in Zone 3 which is North Naples will be Medic 3, the unit in zone 4 which is Marco Island will be Medic 4, Zone 5 which is Golden Gate will be will be Medic 5, Zone 6 which is Immmokalee will be Medic 6 and Medic 7. (2 vehicles). The helicopter will become Air 1, if we have a BLS unit on the road any given day it will be Tech 1 . If we go into any type of disaster or mutual aid then we use the 20 series. Example: In the event of a disaster involving mutual aid and our Zone 1 was in Lee County, that unit would be referred to as Medic 21 . We want to look at all points before a decision is made to accept this system. Eventually personnel and specific equipment will be identified in text also. Marty asked about the rear view mirror on truck 9 and any truck that does not have one. It was voted that all units have a rear view mirror installed. Doug advised after the meeting with ARA a couple of weeks ago he wanted to know in writing when his vehicles were getting certain maintenance checks. Doug Cameron asked how the combination key system is working. Marty asked for a procedure to be drawn up for when a on duty unit is assigned to a signal 15. Doug suggested a certain format such as March 10, 1987 Page 4 Marty asked for a procedure to be drawn up for when a on duty unit is assigned to a signal 15. Doug suggested a certain format such as asking if there will be a restroom at the facility, food available, etc. These are pretty rare incidents. Drug boxes are getting crowded with part old and part new stuff. Get with Sally 8 Bill to get coordination and forms implemented. Randy brought up truck rotation particularly in Immokalee. Doug made up his mind how trucks rotate a long time ago will get with Bill on it. Bill brought up the EMS logo on the side of our units. He is reflecting ideas and input from everyone to possibly redesign the logo with language everyone feels happy with. The Field Instructor's vacancy on A shift has been filled by Paul Wilson. We have been asked by the Turkey Tribune for articles monthly if anyone has any input. Bill is asking crews for news. Doug suggested an article on how to react when an emergency vehicle approaches you. Bill is trying to get pre-employment testing together for the second week in March. He has some applicants. Within the next 4-6 weeks we are hoping our paramedic vacancies will be filled. We now have the new 506 protocol. It will be issued to each employee. We will have a 506 refresher for all employees in the very near future. Bill talked about the overtime list. He asked about a voluntary sign up list. The system we now have has to be modified. We spend hours looking for personnel for overtime. Doug suggested a pager. When the clerk is here we will follow the format, when the clerk is not available, the supervisors can use whoever they contact first. The supervisor should not always call the same people, however.