County Continues To Struggle With EMS Staffing

    Emergency response continues to be a topic within the Lake County government, as efforts to attract new paramedics have so far been fruitless.
    The Lake County Commission last month agreed to an $8,000 hiring bonus and other incentives to build staffing in its ambulance service, but emergency management director Tommy Carpenter on Tuesday said that results have been disappointing.
    “We’ve not been able to recruit any paramedics successfully,” Carpenter said.
    In recent weeks, the county’s staffing shortage was so severe that it accepted help from Sarasota County and the town of North Port, both of which sent ambulances to help cover an August jump in requested services. Today, call volume has receded to the point the county is able to operate on its, own, with a twist.
    Carpenter said that in recent weeks more units from the fire rescue side of the county’s emergency response program have entered ambulance service. In all, 18 positions have been shifted from EMS to fire rescue as the county embarks on a program that could eventually lead to all EMS operations being folded into fire rescue.
    The county is considering multiple options to improve emergency response, including partnering with cities, who would make staff available to respond to emergencies using ambulances provided by Lake County. Additionally, there is at least a passing interest in seeing if outsourcing some operations could add efficiency to a system that currently sees a lot of administrative and operational duplication. Though on Tuesday it appeared the county commission's preference going forward would be to simply streamline operations while keeping emergency response fully in-house.