The Carroll County Emergency Services Board met Thursday night to discuss a recent breach of protocol by the Lambsburg Rescue Squad.

Lambsburg Rescue Squad has not been dispatched on emergency 911 calls since New Year’s Eve, Carroll County Administrator Gary Larrowe said. The breach involved a patient that should have received advanced life care support, but instead was only treated by a volunteer trained in basic life support.

“It was a breach of protocol and the new (Operating Medical Director) was the one who brought it to our attention and to (Emergency Services Coordinator) Joe (Roma),” Larrowe said. “I took action on New Year’s Eve. They were being dispatched through 911 and I canceled that.”

The Carroll Emergency Services Board voted to uphold Larrowe’s decisions during its Thursday meeting. Larrowe said the next step would be a review by the state or Virginia.

“Lambsburg will continue to not be dispatched from 911 until further notice,” Larrowe said.

No one from Lambsburg Rescue Squad was in attendance at the meeting, Larrowe said.

Cana Rescue Squad is currently covering the Lambsburg area. Lambsburg Rescue Squad is the only rescue squad in Carroll County that does not receive financial support from the county. The squad was being dispatched by the regional E-911 center in Galax.

Dr. Jason Edsel, Carroll County’s new Operational Medical Director (OMD), briefed the Carroll County Board of Supervisors on the situation at a Jan. 12 meeting and of his visits to all the county’s rescue squads that day except for Lambsburg and Laurel Fork.

Edsel is from North Carolina, where he practices in the emergency department in Mount Airy. He said emergency services differ greatly in North Carolina and Virginia.

“Unfortunately, though, as medicine advances and as standards of care become higher, the ability to put an advanced life support person on every call is becoming further and further out of reach for volunteer services,” Edsel said. “As a county, our challenge is really going to be how can we do that? How do we get an advanced life support trained person to every 911 call in Carroll County? I don’t have the answer yet. I know I am here to travel with you on the journey to make that occur.”

Edsel said he took the first step toward that goal by hand-delivering a new set of medical protocols to each rescue department in the county he visited that day.

“The first step along this journey is to get everybody doing the same thing medically so that whether you call Dugspur Rescue or you call Cana Rescue or Pipers Gap Rescue, when those personnel show up they are going to be operating under the same medical guidelines and providing the same level of services,” he said.

Edsel said the first thing Carroll County needs is a training coordinator for emergency services. That will allow the county’s responding agencies to start quality assurance and quality improvement programs to measure how well they are maintaining protocols. That will also allow Carroll to improve the care it gives its citizens.

“This is indeed what this is about, care for the people of Carroll County. And right now, I can’t tell you how good that care is,” Edsel said. “I don’t have a measuring stick by which to tell you if we are doing a good job or if we are not doing a good job. I have implemented the measuring stick today.”

As a government entity, Edsel said Carroll is responsible for the coordination of emergency services to its citizens. Supporting the rescue agencies will benefit the county as a whole, he added.

Edsel said his goal is to have at least an EMT-intermediate level responder on each 911 call in the county. That is a very high goal that may take five years to obtain, he said.

Carroll County Board of Supervisors’ Chairman David Hutchins asked Edsel to meet with the county’s emergency services board to share his requests and goals, particularly for a training coordinator. Edsel said the training coordinator position would most likely need to begin at a part-time, 20-hour per-week position. It may need to grow in the near future, however, because of the constant changes in the field and because of continuing education requirements for volunteers.

Hutchins asked Edsel to meet with Carroll’s Emergency Services Board to provide insight into the breach of protocol in the Lambsburg Rescue Squad situation as well.

Lambsburg Rescue Squad was asked a little over a year ago to come under the umbrella of Carroll County’s Emergency Services, but the squad declined at that time.