On December 7, 2015, there were no paramedics available for 9-1-1 calls in Latah County for a period of nearly five hours.
If you listened to the video then you heard the voice of the only paramedic on call at Moscow Ambulance notifying dispatch of what he was doing. He had answered a call from Gritman Medical Center for a non-emergency transfer to move a patient to another hospital.
He did this knowing full well the situation he was leaving behind, as he clearly stated that Latah County would have no paramedic available for the next four to five hours, until he got back.
This didn’t have to happen. A private ambulance service, PACT EMS, was ready and willing at the time to take the patient on that transport. So why didn’t they? Why did the only paramedic in the county who could legally respond to 9-1-1 calls go on a four-hour long road trip up to Spokane or Coeur d’ Alene when there were other resources available that could have been deployed instead?
The only answer I can give is that EMS Division Chief Dave Reynolds bullied Gritman into calling Moscow Ambulance for transports instead of PACT EMS, threatening to take Moscow’s EMS patients to Pullman if they didn’t.[1]
Read more over at Bring to Light