WCEMSC December 2012
Meeting called to order at 1310.

Minutes from Novembers meeting were distributed.
Motion made by Ed and seconded by Mark. Motion passed.

Treasures report distributed. 
Don was not paid last month which skewed the amount in account.  Also a refund from SWIF was also deposited.  
Motion made by Mark and second by Ed to approve the treasurer's report.  Motion passed. 

Don
EMSOF funding has been completed.  Don thanked all the services for working with the short time period that it occured in. The percentage allocated was the same as last year. Mon Valley, Laurel Valley and Ligonier turned down finding.  Norvelt and Trafford did not apply.  The money was divided between the rest  It was then sent to Amos at EMSI. It will be sent to the board to be approved and then to the State for final approval.

Marc
96.9 compliance
There will be a mailing sent to all of the services to inform the 911 center of equipment updates. If any changes within your service please send back the correct information.
Over last month, 6 dailysis units were contacted within our county concerning what they do with inclement weather and the need to have patients dialyzed. A wide range of answers were given and no one would commit to an answer on what would happen if they cannot get patients into the clinics. Dr Ward was receptive on getting people in and making plans on how to accomplish that goal.
Discussion on the interference on 155.160 from the Mon Valley to Allegheny County.
Weather emergency action guidlines were distributed for everyone to view and discussion of those guidelines occured. Derrick questioned getting busy signals and the ability to get through yesterday all afternoon. He also questioned police dispatch talk groups that they have to use.

Wcara
They are trying to put an entire year schedule together on who will be hosting the meetings. Try to have guest speaker or presenter to make the meetings relevant and to try to increase attendance. EMS day in May with the possibility to join with council to do a mass casualty drill. Ed has triage tags. There will there be air show in the county but the exact dates won't be known until mid January. Dan was asked to inform Ed of when the dates were known.

EMSI
Jewish healthcare foundation along with UPMC held a safety seminar. Good turnout. Emsi bought seat belt covers to put in response and goal to get emergency vehicles wearing seat belts. Discussion continued about its use in rear of ambulances. Highly visible and trying to get services to wear seatbelts in front. End of year medical command; Have to get turned in by December 31 and Emsi only has 30 days to process and get back to medical command to tell who is eligible. And not a liability issue.
Training update;
Paramedic class is complete. Considering having a spring class or not. Evoc February class in planned.

Nico
Working with Sarah on LZ project.
Sarah same
Dan N.  had radio questions. The 800 upgrade does not provide vehicle info which is totally separate for each ship,. The new system will only show Stat 2 as its Radio identifier. It is identified as stat 2 or whatever unit no tail numbers are used.

Committes.

No business ;
New committees in January
Old business;

Monty discussed ways to make each individual agency, make a decision on the welfare check response . Tom passed out documentation and best practices that Emsi uses for these type calls.  If they work for you great, if not develope an alternative.

Mark Taylor opened discussion about EMS ops during weather emergencies and the inability to access patients  or transport them to dialysis.  To better determine how to manage these patients,Tom passed out SOG from EMS.  Tom stated they are non binding but to take look at them to see if they help. These guidelines are made by EMS. This is a consensus document of what was set up by EMS. Darrick had no response on EMS and changing the running procedures.  These guidelines have been in place for last 4 years.  Approach all EMS incidents the same, Stop first !  Have someone pause for a second and think if there is a better solution.  Darrick passed around a weather alternative plan. If no one can move maybe a telephone triage would be a good alternative. Lengthy discussion ensued. 

Officers nominations for
Secretary- Denise nominated by Ed. No other nominations
Treasurers- Chris Price nominated Ed.  No other nominations
Vice President -Ed Grant nominated by Derek. No other nominations
President  -Darrick nominated by Ed. No other nominations
Motion to close. Marc, passed
Send out nominations till next meeting. Nominations will be open until January meeting.

Director Brooker
Trying to get publicity for police fire and EMS. Asked council to give nomination for first EMS service recognition--for a milestone or service wise to highlight their activities
Narrow band brief. Questions about getting minitors. Fire regional AFG grant. EMS could attempt to do another grant. He will support getting information out.
Going to implement a zone meeting. As DPS going into areas to hold a meeting with all about issues and challenges they are facing In there respective areas.
Mass casualty drill--will we need to have 911 involved

Discussion on  narrow banding and making each current EMS frequency correct into the plan and how impacting it will be on retaining them and using in the future to meet with FCC. 155.160, .340 and. 280 .

Penn Twp EMS 40 year anniversary. Brooker will let you know whats needed for the DPS newsletter.

Motion to adjourn at 2:12 Mike and Dan

EMSOF Distribution for 2012-2013

Arnold Fire-EMS                                   $ 3,189.00

Irwin   VFD-EMS                                   $ 1,000.00

Jeannette EMS                                    $ 1,634.00

Kecksburg VFD Rescue Squad                $ 3,324.78

Lowel Burrell  VFC #3                            $ 1,498.00

Mount Pleasant EMS Medic 10                $   500.00

Murrysville Medic One                            $ 7.363.93

Mutual Aid Ambulance Service, Inc.        $16, 713.17

New Kensington Ambulance                  $ 2,424.26

North Huntingdon Rescue 8                  $ 5,337.86

Oklahoma VFD EMS                              $ 2,783.00

Penn Township Ambulance Assoc.         $ 1,115.00

Rescue 14 EMS, Inc.                            $ 3,000.00

Rostraver/West Newton EMS                $ 1,324.00

Sewickley Township Ambulance Svc       $ 1,324.00

Vandergrift Ambulance Service              $ 2,783.00

The Westmoreland County EMSOF Committee wants to thank all of our County EMS Services for their help and patience during this years process.  Also please remember your deadlines. These deadlines are very important.

WCEMSC November 2012
Director Brooker had a presentation on narrow banding.
The FCC has made the deadline of 1/1/13.
Fire paging is done via low band. The equipment is over 20 years old and obsolete.  The county has to use 12 towers and rents 7 of them to alert the fire departments. There is limited coverage and a lot of dead spots.
Ambulance paging is also obsolete and what is used is not narrow band compliant.  The county has to use 8 towers and leases 5 of them. The ambulance services who have Minitor 5's for their paging can use this equipment because they can be reprogrammed. 
Objectives
Meet FCC mandate
Provide better service for EMS and fire
Better coverage
Long term cost saving
Utilize existing equipment
Build in survivability and redundancy   
Darrick questioned who will be programming the radios now that Bill Fleming is gone.  It will be Marc Taylor and Brian Jones.    
Also asked about the cost to do over the air programming for the system?
2 million.
Ed questioned why was Director Brooker only asking for county money for fire and hazmat?  He stated that it was his decision to support them since the EMS has equipment that can be reprogrammed whereas the fire department and Hazmat team need to purchase all new equipment.

Motion to accept Oct and Sept meeting by Ed and 2nd by Mac. No opposition
Chris’s treasurer report attached.  Motion to accept by Marc and 2nd by Ed with no opposition
Don
Report on SCORE. Waiting for WCEMSC Board to come back with suggestion as how to proceed.  Anticipate after the first of the year.
Audit done for workers comp with a refund check received.

Marc
97.6% compliance.
Narrow banding – some questions and discussion
800 upgrade programming a master site took a week, Questions on whey it cannot be done over the air – discussions of why or why not.   ICOR project was discussed.  Time for Council to update profile Q am system.

Marc requested to have December meeting to and invite other ems agencies for updates and questions.
Discussion about storm plan for December meeting.
-    Specifically about dialysis patients
-    Discussion how to get the word out to dialysis patients
o    Marc suggest that EMS services to that
o    It was suggested that the County EMA take the lead.

LZ project – Nothing to report at this point Life Flight and STAT still working on it.

ED asked about the 800 MHz EMS change to the template.  Marc said not yet but to check with the RCC.

STEVENS

Training USAMRICD
Marcellus shale training
Nothing from drill


WCARA – Next meeting on November 19th at RWNES base - main office.

EMSOF – with events going on the EMSOF process has been extremely compressed.  EMSOF committee was distributed the same as last year. Don has entered the data in WEBEMSOF already and you can spend on any items on the approved lists with 50% reimbursement.  One service has already turned it down so if anyone needs extra please let him know. Everyone EMS services has a minimum of $1,000 and new ones and one other service moved to about $1,400.00 dollars.
Discussion about this year’s idea of a County project but it did not materialize.

Membership – Chris has lost his job at Rescue 8 and Ed recommended he be moved to a Consumer seat to complete the rest of the year as the Treasurer.  Ed motioned, Marc 2nd without opposition.  We now have 2 EMS seats open.


STAT – New outreach coordinator – Traci. 
LZ project were as discussed before
Lifeflight
Nothing new

Training

MAEMS – EFR tested last week and will begin new EMT program in Greensburg and Sardis VFD
Paramedic Changes – from pre-paramedic class to full class they lost 4 students and now have 26-27 left in class.

Old business –

MCI trailer – no updated supplies as of yet.
Ask Hobaugh and others familiar with the process.  Region 13

Motion to adjourn by Marc and 2nd by Tom
Meeting adjourned @ 1510

October 2, 2012

Meeting of record held. Not enough members for a quorum.
Minutes from September meeting tabled.

Don Thoma cannot be here due to a work  commitment.

911
Medic 930 will cease operations November 1 or 30, 2012.
Excella Frick cannot afford the unit and they consider when the unit leaves the hospital to assist  a service as of down time and loss of a ER staff employee 

Lifeflight and Stat sat down at the 911 center to look at the LZ areas in the county.  There were many LZ areas that are now housing plans and there are more than 300 LZ's in the county. 
They will be working together to approve areas and to have uniform LZ's in the county.

There is a new stroke protocol that has been put out by the Clausen system.  The dispatchers are using the new 12.0 protocols.  These protocols error on the side of the patientbased protocols air on the side of the statioUsing new 12.0 protocols error on side of patient. 
The radio deadline is October 12 and by that date all the radios have to be updated. 
Radio deadline oct 12 by sprint deadline to have radios updated 
The FCC in conjunction with Sprint has a five year plan.  One unit at Laurel Valley still has not been reprogrammed.  After October 12 the radios will no longer be covered if they are unusable.  The agreement will be signed on October 12, 2012. If anyone still uses the frequency after October 12, a fine will be sent to that service and that service will be responsible to pay the fine.  There'll be a public meeting on October 18 about work on the monitors being narrow band capable.  Negotiated a price of $392 with a vendor and the system will be live by March of next year. The last week of October is when the commissioners will consider this proposal. if approved by the commissioners there will be an informal meeting and all the services will be invited so that the process can be explained to them. Once the simulcast if everyone will be able to see how good it is and hopefully have that fire department consider using this much more reliable the narrowband system is.
A question was bought up concerning a multi agency responce to a particular incident; does the CAD system update on the EMS side when information is entered on the fire side?  At this point, the system does not update as questioned.  The integration needs to be looked at and Allegheny County is having a similar issue. The dispatchers need to talk to one another to share the information and then be manually entered in the other side. there also was a question brought up about the use of a county wide tach channel.  Services are being told that the supervisor has the issue that type of channel in order for there to be just one channel instead of up to four channels.

EMSI
LMS has an education program on Stroke Centers. The Stroke Center is more of a transportation destination. None of the Westmoreland hospitals are on the stroke center list. you are to take the patient to the closest stroke center. Call your medical command and if they tell you that hey can handle the stroke patient take to that facility because your medical command physician can override the protocol. Tom stated for us to think about county wide projects. Funding is flat and less and less of county money will be out there.
It was brought up that some services are having issues with EMS charts.  It has become difficult to use and when EMS Charts what's question they stated that it was a Comcast Internet issue and not actual problem with their program. We will be sending out an email to all the services to see if anyone is having problems with EMS charts. We will ask for what Internet provider they are using and what type of issue they are actually having with the program. 

EMSOF has been reduced at a regional level. reduction at regional level. However Westmoreland County dollars actually have increased a little.

Old business
Avonmore equipment has all been re-allocated. Most equipment went to the trailer and most of the requests were for the portable radios.

Marcellus Shale.  Please let Dan know if there are any classes needed for the ambulance providers.  the companies want to provide training and they will be remaining in our county doing Marcella Shale drilling for the foreseeable future. It was mentioned that ITLS(International trauma life support) is a class that would fall under this category.