Vashon’s fire chief has recommended that the current proposal to combine Vashon’s paramedics with those of south King County be taken back to the drawing board.

Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) Chief Hank Lipe said during the board of commissioners meeting last Tuesday that, if implemented, the current Medic One draft proposal could at times potentially leave the island without paramedic coverage for up to 82 minutes.

“That concerns me. I cannot endorse this draft,” Lipe told the board.

The concern was based on Lipe’s beta test of the proposal, using current and former calls as well as hypothetical unstable patient transports to determine where the weaknesses of the plan are and how they might be addressed.

Last Tuesday, the department responded to six medical aid calls in four hours, giving Lipe the information he needed to test how the situation would have worked under the proposed plan.

Currently, VIFR medics transport islanders in need of urgent medical care to mainland hospitals as a team of one paramedic (a highly trained medical professional who responds to the most serious of calls) and one emergency medical technician (EMT), trained to respond to less severe emergencies. Under the new plan, those teams could still transport stable patients and would transfer patients to mainland paramedics at the Fauntleroy or Point Defiance ferry dock before heading back to the island.

The proposed plan substantially decreases out-of-service time while transporting stable patients, a point that Lipe recognized.

However, in the case of unstable patients, the draft plan calls for both on-island paramedics to take the patient to the hospital; there would not be a transfer at the dock. Backup medics from the closest mainland station would be called to Vashon to fill in the medic gap.

That time between Vashon’s medics leaving and a backup team coming on to the island is what has Lipe concerned.

“I cannot endorse anything that could cause … (this much of a) wait time,” Lipe said.

At the county, James Fogarty, division director of King County’s Emergency Medical Services, stands by the proposal as an improved EMS model for Vashon.

“If you put the two plans (current way of doing things and the proposal) side by side, the proposal offers improved service in every way,” Fogarty said last week. “The plan calls for a commitment to always have a team ready.”

The purpose of the plan is to bring Vashon into compliance with the Medic One standard of two-medic transports.

“The basic question is because (Vashon) is an island community, medics need to leave the island. Is keeping a medic (on the island) more important than sending two medics off? That’s the dilemma,” Forgarty said.

Former VIFR Assistant Chief George Brown said last month that about 90 percent of patients the paramedics transport are considered stable. Paramedics transport roughly three patients every week.

Currently, the only way both island paramedics could be off-island is if a call for transport comes in while a paramedic/EMT team is already off-island on another call. Lipe said he “can count on one hand” the number of times that happens in a year.

“It is below minimal the instances that they (both paramedics) are off the island,” Lipe said. “It’s so rare.”

The board will meet again on April 26, and Medic One discussions are expected to continue.

Board chair Candy McCullough said that Lipe’s beta test is a way to show the county how serious the advanced life support (ALS) situation is on Vashon given the ferries and the challenges they present.

“Data gathering is the best thing we can do right now, and I’m in agreement we have to look at this further,” she said. “If every ALS is a two-medic transport, they will be out of service for a lot longer. The proposal as it is doesn’t fix the problem.”