Services as Advertised?

After doing the unit activity analysis for Tippecanoe Emergency Ambulance Service, I was reminded by someone of what TEAS advertises itself on its website:

"Our staff covers four paramedic ALS ambulances, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, one ambulance 16 hours a day, one paramedic ALS ambulance 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and two administrative chase cars staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

ALS = Advanced Life Support

BLS = Basic Life Support

Administrative Chase Cars are staffed with medics that can perform ALS duties, but they do not transport patients.

The activity logs reviewed prove that this statement on their website is completely false.

- "Our staff covers four paramedic ALS ambulances, 24 hours a day, seven days a week": There are 4 ALS units that operate during the day, for sure, around ~7am-7pm. But from ~7pm-7am, those 4 units generally average 50% ALS and 50% BLS, not 100% ALS. Sometimes there's only a single ALS unit during this timeframe.

- "and two administrative chase cars staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.": In the logs there are a couple of EMS units listed, but only EMS3 is on duty 24/7. The other unit that is there with regularity is EMS1, which is the Director's car, and he does not have a EMT license, so it doesn't count. Jury is still out on EMS2, which could just be the director on some days, but is not staffed particularly regularly. So instead of 2 administrative chase cars 24/7, there is 1. Maybe, occasionally, there are 2.

By all accounts, this verbiage has been on the website for several years. In fact, the page quotes how many runs it did in 2018. It also quotes a population number that hasn't been seen since ~2020. Not sure why a website would put stats older than the current year when it updates a website, so it seems that it's likely to be somewhere around 6 years old. We're running less qualified units now than we were then?

I keep hearing that there's a shortage of qualified people, but you know what's also true? Not paying staff appropriately and having them do twice the workload of any other equivalent employer is a policy choice. Why is this choice being made? Unfortunately, the county commissioners are hiding the policies and financial picture, even though TEAS is required to give this information to the county.

When I gave public comment today at the commissioners meeting and pointed out these discrepancies, the only response I got was "What website is that? Maybe we need to update this. It sounds out of date." I can't wait to see what verbiage they replace it with.

Website Screenshot - 8/17

Below is a screenshot of https://www.franciscanhealth.org/patient-resources/programs-and-support/teas from 8/17. After my public comment on 8/18, Franciscan removed this entire section. Check it out for yourself.