News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Fentress County will apply for a Department of Health grant to provide new equipment for the county’s emergency medical service.
EMS Director Daniel Coleman said it is a competitive grant and he is requesting the maximum funding of $150,000. Coleman said he plans to use the money to refund a recent purchase for new monitors and get four ventilators so every truck in the department can have its own.
“Having this equipment allows us to increase our capabilities,” Coleman said. “Versus before if we had one of those calls we would have to call for another ambulance to spring us a piece of that equipment. Now if I was able to have that on all our ambulances, then whenever we initiated that care we wouldn’t have to call for another truck to bring us the equipment.”
Coleman said the department is also considering using the grant to acquire IV pumps so first responders can administer medicine in a more controlled way than an IV push. Coleman said the county should know whether or not it is getting the grant by the end of December.
“We’ve got numerous things that we want,” Coleman said. “We’ll just have to look and see how much we get, if we get any, and we’ll go from there.”
Coleman said he is confident that he can prove the county’s need for the grant but that may not be enough to secure funding. Coleman said every licensed ambulance service in the state can apply for the grant and there are only $2 million that will be given out.
“Tennessee has a lot of rural communities, especially communities that (were) just hit with a disaster here a couple months ago in east Tennessee,” Coleman said.
Coleman said the county recently allowed the department to replace its monitors because the items were wearing down with age. Coleman said getting more ventilators would allow for easier ventilator transports both out of the ER and in the field.
