It’s National Emergency Medical Services Week and for Greene County, the ambulance service has seen a recent transition.

After 32 years of being a privately run business known as Greene County EMS under the direction of Dennis and Marcia Morlan, it is now ran by the Greene County Board of Supervisors as Greene County Ambulance Service. Director Michele Madsen says she has six full-time and ten part-time staff, and that includes nine Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), one Advanced EMT, two paramedics, two registered nurses and two drivers. Since the transition at the end of February until now, Madsen points out they have been busy due to not being fully staffed and having to cover shifts whenever possible.

Now that they are fully staffed, Madsen adds they will start their 24-hours on, 48-hours off rotation schedule June 1st. Also since taking over the operations, Madsen says everyday has been a learning experience on the administrative side for her. But she points to the support from the County Supervisors, to the Iowa Department of Public Health, Greene County Sheriff Jack Williams, and other co-directors from other healthcare facilities that have been helpful. She says a cool thing is when EMS responds to a scene of an incident that involves the fire department and law enforcement, every entity works together as a team and leans on one another for their speciality at times.

Madsen talks about the kind of support she’s been getting from the community overall.

“The response that we’ve gotten from the community, the people expressing their gratitude for the continuation of providing the emergency care in the county. And that there was a seamless transition that was unnoticed to the community members.”

She also expresses her personal appreciation to the Morlans for starting the ambulance service.

“We definitely need to thank Dennis and Marcia Morlan for their 32 years of service that they dedicated to building this service that we are now in.”

The number one group of people that Madsen is most appreciative of is her employees. She says it’s humbling to have the people she has for her staff and she would trust every person to take care of her own children, which is something she learned from her mentor, Dr. Roberta Baldus when she first began her EMS career over 20 years ago. Madsen adds there’s no amount of words she can say that would come close to the amount of accolades that her staff deserves. So she asks the public to say thank you to your local EMS crew during National EMS Week this week. See below for the full list of names of the current staff members of the Greene County Ambulance Service.    

Michele Madsen (Director-Paramedic)

Lacy Follett-Brubaker (Paramedic)

Becky Freeman (Adv. EMT)

Andy Hamilton (EMT)

Mike Heinz (EMT)

Chad Jones (EMT)

Daniel Moranville (EMT)

Richard “Dick” Moranville (EMT)

Ryan Moranville (EMT)

Allison Powell (EMT)

Mark Renslow (EMT)

Jason Spencer (EMT)

Lori Harrah (RN)

Abigail Skoglund (RN)

Chad Black (Driver)

Michael Wahl (Driver-EMT Student)