(Photo via Getty Images, logo courtesy of the State of Iowa)
A northern Iowa ambulance service has been warned a second time for having insufficient staff on hand to meet state regulations.
The Iowa Bureau of Emergency Medical and Trauma Services has issued a citation and warning to the Belmond Ambulance Service for failing to respond to 911 calls with, at minimum, one currently certified emergency medical care provider and one driver, and with the repeated failure to meet the requirements or standards of Iowa’s Emergency Medical Services law.
According to the board, on June 28, 2024, a member of the Belmond Ambulance Service transported a flight crew and patient in the Belmond ambulance without meeting the minimum staffing requirements.
The board also alleges that in July 2022, the Belmond Ambulance Service was issued a formal letter of warning for violating the state’s minimum staffing requirements.
Monica Halverson, the emergency medical services director for Belmond Ambulance Service, said the incident in June involved a patient who was accompanied on an ambulance-transportation call by a life-flight crew that had been grounded due to weather. While the flight crew was well qualified to assist with the patient’s transportation to Des Moines, Halverson said, they weren’t on staff with the Belmond Ambulance Service, which needed to have its own employee on the call.
The 2022 incident, she said, was more directly related to a staffing shortage. The ambulance service couldn’t find a qualified staff member to respond to a call for a critically ill patient and so an advanced registered nurse practitioner from Iowa Specialty Hospital filled in and went on the call.
Halverson said both incidents were reported to the bureau by the Belmond Ambulance Service itself as part of a request for regulatory guidance.