HUTCHINSON, Kan. – The local hospital, Hutchinson Regional Medical Center and Reno County Emergency Medical Services joined similar organizations nationwide during May in observance of EMS Week.
Emergency Medical Services or EMS as it’s often referred to was in its infancy in 1974 when President Gerald Ford signed a proclamation authorizing the annual observance. In those distant times, EMS was a fledgling profession and the healthcare professionals who worked within the organizations nationwide were on the cusp of gaining much deserved recognition for their around the clock efforts.
Kevin Miller, F.A.C.H.E., President and CEO of Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System, said the Reno County EMS story started in 1971 and is today a 44 year old success story that stands as a model to the state and nation for its rapid high tech response to emergency medical situations.
“That year a group of healthcare visionaries, including Drs. Jack Wortman and William Von Ruden, working with City Manager George Pyle and Joe Mackey, Hutchinson Hospital Corporation CEO, met to find common ground for the county’s emergency medical services,” Miller said. “Mackey offered the services of the city’s two hospitals to operate the ambulance service with trained personnel, an offer no one could refuse.”
On September 1, 1971, a new era of EMS service was launched in Reno County, which remains in effect today.
In 2002, Reno County EMS established a substation in Arlington, 20 miles southwest of Hutchinson, which provides 24/7 care to an area that comprises nearly 40 percent of Reno County’s rural population.
Miller said Reno County EMS, a department of Hutchinson Regional Medical Center, currently employs 37 full and part-time employees and during 2014 responded to 5,371 emergency calls.
“Training for EMS personnel is ongoing and it is our goal to provide the best treatments for everything from advance cardiac life support to neonatal resuscitation,” Miller said. ‘Reno County EMS is an integral part of the Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System team providing pre-hospital advanced life saving techniques that contribute to improved outcomes for patients. The “scoop and run” days of the former ambulance services have been replaced with mobile intensive care being brought directly to the patient’s side.”
“One hundred years after Hutchinson transported its first patient to a hospital in what may have been a Model T Ford, Hutchinson Regional Medical Center/Reno County EMS is serving area residents with emergency medical services second to none with a constant eye on how we might get even better,” Miller continued.
All of us at Hutchpost and Eagle Radio also salute these men and women who work around the clock seven days a week, 365 days a year to help save lives and treat the wounded and sick in our area.