Grand Chute fire department, Feb. 20, 2023. PC: Fox 11 Online
GRAND CHUTE, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The new year brought new public safety services to residents and visitors in the Town of Grand Chute. The Grand Chute Fire Department now offers its own advanced life support ambulance transport services.
It took just one minute into the New Year for the Grand Chute Fire Department’s new ambulance service to respond to a call. Things haven’t slowed down.
In fact, in the first seven days of the year, Grand Chute crews have responded to 62 EMS calls, transporting 56 patients to the hospital.
“It’s been a hot start to the year, so far. But it’s good, everybody is excited to offer this service. I think everybody sees the benefits of it for the patients which is obviously the priority of it, is to streamline things and make patient care as easy as possible for the person that needs the help,” said Lt. Paramedic Derrick Green.
Years in the making, the new ambulance service builds off of what the fire department has been doing for decades.
According to Fire Chief Steve Denzien, “Our personnel can now actually provide a much higher level of care not only on scene where we provide a minimum of two paramedics to provide intervention to people but then we sending our engine companies along where we can have up to three additional paramedics.”
Grand Chute Fire responds to a little more 3,000 calls for service each year. More than 60% of those calls are for medical reasons. And 75% of the time Grand Chute Fire arrives on scene before other first responders.
While Grand Chute firefighters, who are crossed trained as paramedics and EMTs, would initiate care — they would hand patients over to a private ambulance service for transport to the hospital. With the new ambulance service in place, that handoff no longer needs to happen.
Chief Denzien said, “We actually don’t have to switch and transition our people or our car to another provider. We actually continue that high quality of care and then take the people to the hospitals in order to give them the most high appropriate treatment possible.”
The streamlined approach, according to Grand Chute officials, is not only better for the patient but those providing the care too.
“It feels good to kind of get to that level and truly be an all hazards providing service to cover anything from fires to now transporting EMS patients to the emergency departments,” added Green.
Not only will the new ambulance service improve response times for calls in Grand Chute, but it also makes additional ambulance services available for neighboring communities should they need help too.
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