Appropriating $12,250.00 Federal Assistance Grant Various Public Safety

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND Reply To: South Bend, Indiana 46601 June 19, 1974 Jerry J. Miller Mayor G. Patrick Gallagher Director, Public Safety Common Council Members 4t4 Floor, County -City Building South Bend, Indiana 46601 near Council Members: Re: Paramedic Program Chief Bland and I have for some time been in a discussion with representa- tives from both St. Joseph's and Memorial Hospital and representatives of the Medical Association in order to plan for the implementation of a para- medic ambulance unit for the City of South Bend. During 1973, about one out of every five ambulance runs out of a total of 5,700 could have employed a paramedic unit. These would be the instances of heart attacks, fractures, Poisonings, amputations, hemorrhages, stabbings, shootings and burns among other examples. Once this appropriation request is funded it will allow the Department of Public Safety and the Bureau of Fire to purchase the necessary telemetry equipment to convert one of our ambulances into a para- medic unit. Simultaneously with the purchase and installation of the equipment, the Department of Public Safety would assign probably three firefighters to paramedic training to be held under the supervision of the Medical Society and in the local hospital emergency rooms. After a training program of approximately 500 hours the Bureau of Fire would operate one paramedic unit out of one of the two hospitals and have the capability of transporting patients to either one of the hospitals. Additionally, training would be on -going because paramedics would be assigned eight hours a day to answer calls from the hospital and would work in the emergency rooms under the supervision of the doctors and nurses when not actually on emergency calls. (McGann's ambulance service would also dedicate and equip one of their ambulances as a paramedic unit and would provide personnel to work side by side with the Bureau of Fire paramedic unit. Therefore, two paramedic ambulances, one private and one public, would be operating out of one of the hospitals' emergency rooms, bringing patients to either one of the two and linked directly to the emergency room by telemetry equipment.)