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Arkwright Town Hall is fly-car ready

Kevin Peebles

ARKWRIGHT — Chautauqua County will be partnering with the town of Arkwright to help provide fly-car services to a large portion of the area.

According to Kevin Peebles from the county Office of Emergency Services, and the EMS project coordinator, a study was done in July 2015 about EMS services, and it was discovered that the county was falling short. To make up for the deficit in services, the county developed a fly-car system, which will use the Arkwright Town Hall as a temporary workspace to complete paperwork and computer work.

A fly-car consists of a paramedic in a vehicle that is equipped with medicine, a cardiac monitor, cardiac drugs, machines to assist with chest compressions on a cardiac arrest patient, and more.

“People aren’t around as much during the day. During the day is the worst time for anybody to get an EMT, for anyone to get an ambulance out the door,” said Peebles.

The fly-car system is going to be staffed from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, a time period which the study deemed to be the worst time to have available EMTs.

“We’re doing this to supplement the volunteers; we’re not here to take over for them. We still need them,” said Peebles. “We’re just here to get somebody out the door and to the patient faster. Originally, it started as a basic life-support type of thing, but if we’re going to get the people there, we might as well get the best care that we can to everybody as soon as we can.”

The county asked Arkwright for permission to use its town hall, since, from Arkwright, it is a 15- to 18-minute response time to Cherry Creek, Forestville, Silver Creek, Sunset Bay, Sheridan and Brocton. Gerry, Ashville and Mayville are also being looked at as fly-car stations.

The buildings will be used merely as a post for the drivers to get out of the weather, or out of their cars, go inside, have a flat surface to write on and get their paperwork done on, and have a stable place to situate their laptops.

The town board, of course, had concerns with potential Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act violations, and protecting the privacy of not only the patients that the fly-cars interact with and write up paperwork on, but the court records in the town hall, as well.

Peebles reassured the board that anything anyone brings into the building would leave with them. Paperwork, laptops, clipboards — it’d be as if they were never there. Also, he agreed that no one would have access to the room that holds the judge’s confidential records.

Town Supervisor Frederic Norton requested that in the contract with the county, it be spelled out that in the event a fly-car driver left any paperwork in the building, the town would be held harmless.

Also in the contract, Norton wanted it to be required that the county include the town hall as an “additional insured” under its insurance policy.

Resident Larry Ball asked, “This building is normally unoccupied during those hours. You wouldn’t want to be sitting in here with the minimum heat; who pays for the additional utilities?”

Peebles replied that some type of reimbursement is in the midst of being discussed.

At the end of the meeting, the town board voted to enter into an arrangement with the county for a fly-car location, subject to a contract to be prepared by the Arkwright town attorney.

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