To the Editor:
There is a saying in hospitals that “time is muscle.” It refers to the fact that the longer heart muscle goes without oxygenated blood, during a heart attack, the more muscle will die. Eventually the heart, and the patient, will die. Prompt treatment is necessary for a patient to survive.
In The Villages there are 5,000-7,000 residents who have been trained to perform CPR. The Villages Fire Department responds to a call in about 4.5 minutes. These two facts mean that a resident having a heart attack has a good chance of recovery if they can get to Leesburg or The Villages Hospitals promptly. Both hospitals have chest pain centers with staff specially trained to treat heart attacks.
How long it takes an ambulance to arrive at a scene and get a heart attack patient to a hospital will make a difference in whether a heart attack patient lives or dies.
A stroke is caused by a bleed, or clot, in a blood vessel in the brain. Promptness in treatment is tied to the survival of patients in this case as well. And we are fortunate that both local hospitals have stroke centers as well. Once again, though, ambulance delay and transport time can make the difference between life and death.
We’ve heard recently about troubling instances involving very significant delays in the arrival of ambulances to transport patients to the hospital. They are not fiction. If you have an app called Pulse Point you can see when AMR does not have an ambulance available. The other day, during a period of one hour I watched as several calls to a scene did not involve an ambulance for some time. These aren’t just delays in transports, they are potential life impacting events.
Something else is going on with AMR. The Sumter County contract requires that “…a prescribed number of ALS Ambulances are assigned …” 24/7/365. ALS describes the level of care an ambulance and its staff can provide. It also means that an ambulance is staffed with Paramedics, not EMTs. AMR is likely not providing the prescribed number of ALS rigs. Neither are they providing all ALS ambulances with paramedics. There have been instances where a FD paramedic has been involved in the transport of a patient. That is, a Villages paramedic has been onboard an AMR rig to be certain a patient gets the proper level of care during a transport to a hospital.
The use of Villages paramedics for transport creates an additional problem. The FD truck the paramedic was on has to be taken out of service until it can be fully staffed again. So AMR’s problems are causing issues both for residents and the FD. I don’t know how long the problems with AMR will continue, but the longer they exist the greater the chance that a heart attack or stroke patient will die.
The county manages the relationship between the two organizations and has appointed public safety director and assistant county administrator Stephen Kennedy to oversee the relationship. Interestingly, the AMR contract is managed by Mrs. Kennedy. She is the lead AMR employee as it relates to the contract with Sumter County. And she reports directly to her husband. Most organizations do not allow nepotism in the workplace. And although Mrs. Kennedy is an AMR employee, the nepotism rule should still apply.
How does the relationship of the Kennedys impact the situation Sumter County finds itself in now? The fact that question even has to be asked is problematic in and of itself.
Sumter County’s duty is to provide, or have provided, an acceptable service that meets expectations, contractual obligations and serves the residents of the county. I would contend that is not the case at the present time. The lives of residents are being adversely affected by poor service which is bordering on dangerous. Neither Kennedy is doing their job. Mrs. Kennedy is unable to provide ambulance services that meet the terms of AMR’s contract with Sumter County, and Mr. Kennedy is apparently unable to properly discharge his responsibility to manage the contract. I’m only one person, but if this were my responsibility, I would remove both Kennedys from their positions. Not a single resident’s life is worth retaining two people who can’t execute their job functions.
And the citizens of Sumter County deserve better.
David Bussone
Village of Sanibel
