Fire District 10 upgrades AEDs
Spokane County Fire District 10 has a new piece of equipment that will make treating patients easier and faster and allow firefighters to send EKG records directly to doctors and ambulance crews.
The Lifepak 15 arrived late last month and provides an important upgrade. The department has automated external defibrillators, called AEDs, to measure heart rates and rhythm and deliver an electric shock if necessary. But the age of the equipment and software changes meant the AEDS were outdated, said fire chief Ken Johnson.
“We are no longer able to transmit,” he said. “We need to upgrade and that upgrade would have cost upwards of $70,000.”
Even with an upgrade, the old machines would still not have been able to transmit, forcing firefighters to print a record or do a physical download, both of which slow down the treatment process. The new Lifepak 15 can do everything the AED did and also transmit records wirelessly. Transmitting those records to ambulance crews is an important part of treatment, Johnson said. The records can also be sent to the hospital where the patient is going so doctors know what is going on with the patient.
“It saves a lot of time on scene,” he said. “When the ambulance gets there, they can leave a lot quicker. What we’re looking at is the ability to capture the data on every single call.”
The Lifepak is on Rescue 10-1, a truck that responds from Station 1 in Airway Heights to every medical and extrication call in the district. That should allow the Lifepak to be used whenever needed, but there will be backup, Johnson said. “We’re still going to keep AEDs on each truck,” he said.
The Lifepak was $25,000, while the cheapest AEDs are available for $700, Johnson said, but no taxpayer money was used to buy the equipment. The district recently renegotiated a contract that allows the placement of a cell tower on the Station 4 property. “The renegotiated contract paid for it,” he said.
Johnson said he didn’t want to use taxpayer money for such an expensive purchase, particularly during a pandemic. “Everyone is being a bit cautious about how they spend taxpayer money,” he said.
Though the Lifepak was expensive, it saved the district $50,000 by allowing it to avoid an expensive upgrade. “We are saving quite a bit of money by going that route,” he said.
Johnson said other departments in the area already have Lifepaks, which will make joint training and responding to calls together easier. “They’re such an efficient tool, people have been buying them for a while,” he said.
Firefighters have been getting hands-on experience on the new equipment since it arrived at the end of June.
“They’ve been training on it daily since it’s new,” Johnson said.
It has already been used on several calls, said Lt. Mike Risley. It makes taking vitals in noisy environments easier and it also makes it easier to socially distance themselves from patients. “We can put the arm cuff on and step back,” he said. “Normally someone would be right on the arm taking the blood pressure.”
It also cuts down the number of people actively working on a patient from three to one or two, said firefighter Taylor Scharff. “It consolidates and speeds up the process,” Scharff said. “At the end of a call, you can do a summary of the call with time stamps.”
The crews like the new equipment, Risley said. “We love it,” he said. “Once we’re all up to speed on it, because it’s new, it’s going to be light years ahead of what we’ve had in the past.”