By Chad Koenen

Publisher

Otter Tail County emergency personnel are hoping a new pilot program could provide advanced life saving care to rural communities across the state. Thanks to $6 million in funding from the State of Minnesota, three rural counties in the state are developing a new sprint medic program that organizers hope will provide some relief and assistance to emergency personnel in some of the most rural parts of Minnesota. 

“Across the state rural EMS has been struggling to make ends meet for the last several years,” said Becca Huebsch who oversees the new sprint medic program in Otter Tail County. “We have been working with legislators to try and find a solution.”

That solution is a state-funded pilot program to essentially provide a medic on standby for approximately 40 hours per week (two in Otter Tail County and one in Grant County) that can immediately respond to emergency calls across the region. The funding came from the State of Minnesota in 2024 that allocated $30 million in emergency, one-time funding to ambulance services across the state. 

A portion of that funding, which was spear-headed by State Senator Jordan Rasmusson of Fergus Falls, was to set $6 million aside for the pilot sprint medic program in St. Louis and Otter Tail Counties (Grant County is included with Otter Tail County in the program). 

As part of the project, a paramedic who is funded by the grant at no cost to local taxpayers, is stationed in rural areas to provide Advanced Life Support care. The goal of the program is to assist with staffing shortages on Basic Life Support ambulance services and provide possible financial savings for BLS services. 

“They are staffing paramedics in a quick response vehicle…in very rural parts of Otter Tail County,” said Huebsch who added that typically the areas covered by the sprint medic have been staffed by Basic Life Support services.

The sprint medic in Otter Tail County is typically stationed in Vining. Huebsch said the location was picked because it is more centralized in the southern half of the county and can quickly reach places like Parkers Prairie, Henning, Battle Lake, Ashby and the southern part of Otter Tail Lake that are more rural and can present challenges for ALS services to reach in a timely manner. 

With so much ground to cover and volunteers making up a bulk of local EMS services, having a dedicated person available to respond who can provide advance support can cut down on response time and provide necessary life saving medical assistance on what could be a 20-30 minute ride to the nearest hospital. 

“The sprint medic can fill in on an ambulance if needed and they can also be that first person on the scene to help,” said Huebsch. “It’s kind of like the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Deputy. They are out and about so when a call comes in they are ready to go.”

The program itself is modeled after a similar program in Grant County where an individual can be immediately paged to respond to emergency calls across the entire rural county should the need arise. The hope was to bring that additional support to ambulance and first responder services across Otter Tail County to provide life saving support as some local organizations struggle to cover the growing needs in the region.

Many of the local EMS and ambulance services provide Basic Life Support that can provide basic airway management, vitals and cardiac monitoring, cardiac arrest care, treatment of trauma patients from tourniquet use to splinting and childbirth and neonatal resuscitation.

Advanced Life Support can provide cardiac monitoring and 12 lead ECG interpretation; cardiac pacing, defibrillation or cardioversion procedure; advanced airway: intubation; sedation and opioid administration; needle decompression for collapsed lung; performing cricothyrotomy and emergency hysterotomy. When a Basic Life Support vehicle responds to a call that needs Advanced Life Support needs, they typically meet a paramedic or ALS vehicle and transfer the patient from one vehicle to the next to transport therm to an emergency room. 

When the sprint medic responds to a call they can ditch their vehicle and ride in the ambulance to the hospital with the patient and emergency personnel to continue to provide Advanced Life Support services without the need to transfer to another ambulance. When the call is over the responding ambulance can bring the sprint medic back to their vehicle and they can either respond to another call or return to their base. 

“It’s been really well received, especially in the Parkers Prairie and Ashby areas. Parkers Prairie especially has been kind of feeling the effects of needing some Advance Life Support coverage. I think they were really excited to see a local ALS provider in the area,” said Huebsch. “I think that is one of the big advantages of the program is the sprint medic can take off right away and provide resources.”

Since launching in late April and early May, Huebsch said the sprint medic has responded to about 30 calls per month in Otter Tail County. While that number may not seem like a lot, Huebsch said the additional support in rural communities can make the difference between life and death. 

“It’s not a huge number, but that is pretty much to be expected in some of these rural areas,” she said.

With a limited number of calls in rural communities, Huebsch said it can be difficult for rural ambulance and emergency services to continue to operate without losing money, something that the pilot sprint medic program is trying to solve. State funding for the program runs through June 2027 to give Otter Tail County personnel enough time to develop and study the program as it hopes to mold the program into something that can assist rural EMS across the state.

While the Henning Ambulance Service is part of the sprint medic program, the ambulance service has requested that the new sprint medic not be immediately dispatched to calls in its area, which is different than a number of other communities in the county.

Henning Ambulance Director Chelsey Waskosky said the reason for the request to not immediately have the sprint medic dispatched to calls in their service area is simple—it isn’t necessary to have the sprint medic at a majority of their calls.

“Eighty percent of our calls are not exciting. They are not the life and death stuff that the movies portray,” said Waskosky, who added the sprint medic has responded to just nine calls in the Henning Ambulance Service area since its inception, compared to 195 calls for the Henning Ambulance Service during that same period. “Eighty percent of our calls are transports. We are transporting people with broken bones or they are sick.”

Serving 300 square miles that includes 100 percent of four township, parts of 13 townships and five communities, Waskosky said immediately dispatching the sprint medic to a call when it isn’t necessary not only requires the ambulance service to bring the medic back to their vehicle after the call is completed, but also takes them out of service if another call comes into dispatch.

“We get that Parkers really loves it,” said Waskosky. For us we just kind of feel like we don’t need them to come to every call.”

After years of waning volunteers to make up the local ambulance service, the Henning Ambulance Service has seen an influx of new volunteers this year with nine new people joining the staff. One thing that Waskosky said would really assist the Henning Ambulance Service would be to allow the sprint medic to be stationed in ambulance services like in Henning when there is a few hour lapse in volunteer hours. Many times this includes hours during the day when volunteers are working out of town and few people are in town to respond to an emergency.

While she said Grant County allows their sprint medic to be stationed in an ambulance service to help with a lapse in coverage, Waskosky said that isn’t the case in Otter Tail County just yet. She said she hopes that is something that can change down the road as the program is molded to fit the needs of rural EMS personnel across the region.

“We are getting the program in its infancy so we are just trying to make the program work for everyone,” she said.