For Gundersen St. Elizabeth’s Hospital and Clinics and Wabasha Ambulance Service, it’s hard to imagine one without the other. In fact, the two are so integral to the other’s success that if one didn’t exist, the other would be hard pressed to carry out the mission of providing fast, compassionate care to those in emergent situations.
For years, the two organizations have leaned on one another. Nearly every call Wabasha Ambulance gets involves St. Elizabeth’s in one way or another, while the hospital has depended on the service as its primary transportation for patients who need immediate care in the emergency room. And now, with a new certification the service recently received, its value to the hospital will increase even more.
A stepped-up service
Last July, Wabasha Ambulance attained its part-time Advanced Life Support (ALS) license, which means it can provide a more sophisticated level of care because of the presence of a paramedic on most calls. Not only does having that paramedic bring a higher degree of care to patients before they reach the hospital, but it also allows the service to provide interfacility transports from St. Elizabeth’s to tertiary centers. When time is of the essence, both could mean the difference between life and death.
“Having a local service is essential to us receiving or transporting our patients,” says Monica Walters, Gundersen St. Elizabeth’s nurse manager in emergency services. “And the ALS just elevated our ability to not have to delay care because we could get our folks transferred,” adding that without that certification, some transfers would require assistance from Lake City Ambulance or Gundersen Tri-State Ambulance in La Crosse.
“Going with the part-time ALS model here in Wabasha has just really helped things out drastically in the ED.”
A growing need
The hospital has for years utilized Wabasha Ambulance, which was a volunteer service before director Ryan Marking took over. Now, the department consists of four full-time employees, three part-timers, 19 paid on-call positions and two trucks. Three of the on-call members, Marking noted, put in more than 1,000 hours of service last year.
In 2023, the service responded to a record 702 calls, up 68% since 2020, and St. Elizabeth’s requested 213 transfers to hospitals in La Crosse or Rochester. Transfers in Minnesota have increased significantly since COVID, with providers leaving smaller hospitals and creating staffing shortages, Marking says.
“In general, our transfers have increased, and that just puts more of a strain on the EMS systems, especially the smaller ones,” he says. “Where we can help spread out and distribute that (load) is beneficial for everybody involved – the hospitals, the patients and the services.”
Another partnership
Luckily, Wabasha Ambulance has seen its ranks increase. It currently has three paramedics on staff, with a second full-time medic beginning this month. And with this new hire, the organizations are looking to collaborate once again by sharing the position.
That means that when the ambulance isn’t busy, the paramedic will be working in the St. Elizabeth’s Emergency Department; but when it is, time will be shifted back to the ambulance service. The hospital will contract with the city for those paramedic hours during increased volumes at the hospital, Walters says.
“It’s a great opportunity to have the paramedic not have that down time and still be able to do good work and skill build and build those relationships here when there’s an opportunity for that,” she says. “Having that paramedic and their expertise is really going to elevate what we do here. It’s going to enhance everyone’s experience.”
New nurses especially, Walters says, can learn from an experienced paramedic. Eventually, some nurses may want to become paramedics themselves, which helps build the system. It’s another anticipated benefit to the partnership between the two entities – one that’s crucial to the success of the hospital.
“I don’t know what we’d do without the ambulance service here,” Walters says. “The delay in care, either getting them in or getting them out, would be catastrophic. That’s why it’s imperative to keep them in town and continue to be a city-run entity so we can continue to have this service here.”