Northwood Mayor Mark Stoner has proposed an Advanced Life Support (ALS) system in the city that promises 24-7 coverage by a paramedic in the volunteer fire department.

Stoner made the proposal at a council meeting last week.

Currently, there is no such guarantee that a paramedic will respond to EMS calls in the city.

The proposal was prompted by an incident that was first reported in The Press in which a resident called 9-1-1 three times on March 3 for her husband who was having breathing problems. Tim Mix, 67, of Parc Rue, had stopped breathing by the time help arrived 28 minutes later from a Northwood rescue squad manned by an EMT. Medic 50, a rescue squad staffed by paramedics in Lake Township, which has a mutual aid agreement with Northwood, transported Mix to Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center, where he was removed from life support two days later. He had suffered brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen, according to Mix’s wife Ellen.

“I would like to propose full-time ALS service for Northwood,” Stoner said at a June 26 council meeting. “I believe that it is more important for us to be able to send someone to an emergency call. I don’t think the residents care whether we have a full-time or part-time chief at this time. What they care about is having someone respond.”

The city is debating the need for a full-time fire chief after former Fire Chief Tim Romstadt, who had an annual salary of $66,000, resigned. Stoner then hired Romstadt as a part-time deputy chief. By making the fire chief position part-time, the savings would allow the city to reinstate two firefighter/EMTs who covered the day shift from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. That shift had been eliminated as a result of budget cuts last year.

Stoner said he has met with Administrator Dennis Recker and Finance Director Toby Schroyer to discuss the full-time ALS proposal.

“We’ve been working on this to put together potential solutions. This is something we’re going to continue to work on. Hopefully, we’ll be able to offer this 24/7 ALS service. I think it’s needed,” said Stoner. “If we want it, we’re going to have to pay for it. But that doesn’t mean we need a tax levy or an increase in income tax.”

Last year, city council approved an ordinance that amended the city’s taxation code to eliminate the 10 percent income tax disbursement into the capital replacement fund. Those funds, which total approximately $1 million, were reallocated into the general fund.

Part of those funds would be used to pay for the ALS system, which could cost over $200,000.

“We can do it that way and not have to tax our residents,” he said.

Stoner said the series of stories written by The Press in the last several weeks on the Mix incident, as well as gaps in EMS coverage in the city, influenced him to propose the ALS system.

“You guys really put us through the ringer,” said Stoner. “We’ve never been able to say we have full-time ALS. To me, that’s the most important thing. For the safety of our residents, this is great.”

The mayor presented the proposal to the Safety Committee, which was supportive, but wanted more information.

“Also, we want to vet it with our firefighters and their leadership,” said Recker after the meeting. “We have a meeting soon to be scheduled with the officers of the fire department and Romstadt.”

The plan calls for full EMS coverage with priority use of Northwood’s part-time fire department personnel, said Recker.

“That means using our 10 paramedics, EMT basics and intermediates on a priority basis, and outsourcing the shift with augmentation from outside sources until such time we can recruit and bring in additional paramedics to cover our shift responsibilities on a 24-7 clock,” said Recker.

Each EMS run would include one paramedic and EMT. Another person with a pager would also be on standby and be deployed to the site, said Recker. “It may be an additional firefighter, who may be an EMT, but that wouldn’t be required. Basically, it’s somebody to help with the heavy lifting, and help with access assurance – moving furniture to get at a patient and that sort of thing.”

“So there would be an immediate response of full ALS capabilities of three people,” he said.

“The only thing that needs to be worked out,” he added, “is what are the additional tone-out and response policies going to be for our other firefighters? That may be paramedics, EMTs, officers, firefighters. Are we going to restrict those and have a dual tone-out policy in place for when there’s a shortfall? When they need help, they need help. But they don’t always need help. And that percentage is being worked on. We’re trying to figure out exactly from our previous run history how many incidences we can expect over a period of a year where we need to allow or would call for additional help internally or externally. What we wouldn’t want to have happen is a whole bunch of people sitting at the fire station who don’t even deploy to the site but they respond to the tone-out and the three people do all of the work. We would end up paying their time at the station. So we want a policy developed and put in place that effectively uses our resources without duplicating costs without reason.”

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