With a proposal for a countywide emergency medical service (EMS) in the works, many are wondering what the benefits for the different services already in place would be.

Guthrie County Health Services Director Jotham Arber says that one benefit is that under one umbrella, the services can receive discounts that they can’t get by themselves. He mentions one way to do that is to have one supplier, like a hospital, purchase those supplies for them.

“Initially, there will be money that is given to those services to make sure that we don’t have any services that go belly up. That has been one of the struggles that they have run into, is not having enough money to cover expenses that they have. So money would go towards those services to provide additional resources for hiring on employees, updating equipment, getting equipment covered.”

Arber continues the list with the possibility for there to be one EMS director, which would streamline processes that they would follow, and provide one set of procedures they would use, meaning that it would be easier to train medics that are hired on, and to train volunteers, who might be able to respond sooner, and treat someone in need while an ambulance is on its way to the site.