County ambulance service sees spike in overtime, drop in morale amid staffing issues

Staffing issues have been looming over the Cole County Emergency Medical Services department for months, but there is disagreement over how bad the situation really is.

On Friday Jack Brade, the chief of the Regional West Fire Protection District, posted a picture of an ambulance with the word “Closed” layered on top with the caption, “If you live on the west end, you’re going to wait a while for an ambulance. No staffing.”

“The ambulance was there. There was no personnel there,” Brade told ABC 17 News. “There’s only one answer for that, it was not staffed.”

Sam Bushman, the presiding commissioner of Cole County, said the ambulance was left unattended due to a high call volume in other areas of the city.

“There might not have been people out there, but there were people on another ambulance,” Bushman said.

The department’s staffing troubles have reached a peak since the department terminated three employees with no explanation in April.

Payment records show that overtime hours have spiked since then. During one two-week period in January, EMS employees logged 385 hours of overtime. That number jumped to 718 in late May, after the unexplained layoffs.

Brody Eller, who was one of the three employees fired in April, says leadership has lowered the spirits of workers significantly. Eller and one other former employee, who commented on the condition of anonymity, said that Jerry Johnston, the Cole County EMS director, had brought morale down to an “all-time low.”

Johnston and Bushman both said that the overtime hours, while not ideal, were all voluntary.

Three paramedics and a new deputy chief are set to start at the department in July.