Pandemic forged tighter bonds among health care and emergency service providers
March 2020 is when everything changed. Two years later, we are examining how those changes inform us and inspire new direction.
Over the coming weeks, we will be taking a look at the way forward and how change has transformed our communities in every way — schools, health care, politics, policing, entertainment, religion, nonprofits and business.
Stories by a team of local reporters will be published periodically over the next several weeks and online at readingeagle.com/tag/coronavirus/
♦ ♦ ♦
Some years ago, first responder agencies didn’t communicate frequently, or even amicably, among one another..But the spread of the COVID-19 virus in 2020 made it essential that information on matters such as personal protective equipment, hospital bed availability and vaccinations was dispersed in a timely manner.
“Five years ago we could not have done this,” said Anthony Tucci, CEO of Western Berks Ambulance Association in Berks. “There were services that couldn’t stand each other. Now if someone has a case of gloves they don’t need, it’s like ‘send it over.’ ”
Before the pandemic, ambulance associations that serve Berks County were part of a working group to improve cooperation among entities competing for business, but the dialogue was limited to emergency medical services and the county Department of Emergency Services.
Recognizing need amid the pandemic for a wider coalition that included fire services, police departments, hospital systems and school nurses, Tucci spearheaded the formation of the Berks County COVID-19 Response Task Force in early 2021.
During the height of the pandemic, the task force was holding daily Zoom meetings.
On the calls were representatives of the hospital systems in and near Berks: Tower Health, Penn State Health, Lehigh Valley Health Network, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health and WellSpan.
It also held weekly virtual meetings with police chiefs and, separately, fire services and EMS agencies.
“Everyone’s got to pull together in this time and share information,” Tucci said.
Though the meetings have scaled back in frequency and duration, officials say they see the value of continuing to talk on a regular basis to facilitate communication and collaboration beyond the pandemic effects.
The meetings initially provided police chiefs with a reliable and timely source of information to help officers protect themselves and their families, and for the chiefs to make known their departments’ needs for personal protective equipment.
Now, daily calls have given way to weekly calls. What previously took an hour to discuss is down to 15 minutes or so.
The first responders say they see the benefit of continuing to meet, even if monthly or every other month, to share information pertaining to COVID variants and other infectious diseases.
Amity Township Police Chief Jeffrey Smith said the task force provides the police department with unadulterated information about vaccines and variants.
“It’s actually been really good because I can go back to my department and share the information with them, and I’m sure they go home and forward the information to their families as well,” he said.
Smith worked as a medic with an ambulance service for a number of years as a teenager and young adult, and understands better than most the friction that sometimes exists between police and EMS.
He said police officers and medics alike need reassurance that they are working together for the same end.
“It’s good to build that relationship,” Smith said. “I look at it that we’re all doing the same thing at the end of the day. We’re all here to help people.”
Smith said he would like to continue the calls, if for no other reason than to foster communication on matters of public health.
Ambulance companies were hit hard by the pandemic.
Many paramedics and emergency medical technicians got sick from COVID — and a few died —so the ambulance companies, which already faced a labor shortage for various reasons before the pandemic, needed to pool their manpower to ensure the region had adequate coverage.
Brian Gottschall, director of the Berks County Department of Emergency Services, was phenomenal at procuring PPE for the first-responder agencies, Tucci said.
The relationships that have formed as a result of regional collaboration during the pandemic would provide the basis for future cooperation.
Gottschall said it may be “a bridge too far” to stretch the current collaboration of emergency services into other types of disasters, such as floods, but any time people are getting to know one another and having open and honest dialogue, it’s a step in the right direction.
The pandemic spurred a heightened period of activity into surrounding counties and with various entities that aren’t considered part of emergency services.
The extent to which the county emergency services worked with the superintendent of the Berks County Intermediate Unit, school nurses and long-term care facilities increased dramatically, Gottschall said, as one example.
“These are all people we know and we talked to but we certainly didn’t interact with the frequency we did during the pandemic,” he said. “We saw those people almost become part of emergency services.”
View more on Mainline Media News