Hospital Opens New Paramedic Base Station

Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital on Tuesday opened Los Angeles County’s first new paramedic base station in 25 years, easing the load on other centers that direct paramedic treatment and traffic by radio.

The hospital’s emergency department will take over about 600 calls a month from St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood and will eventually relieve other medical centers of some calls.

St. Francis, one of the county’s 13 trauma centers, has been taking more than 1,600 paramedic calls a month -- more than twice as many as a hospital base station can normally handle, said Cathy Chidester, assistant director of the county’s Emergency Medical Services Agency.

As a result, paramedics often wait to talk to a nurse certified in handling trauma calls, delaying care for patients.

“They’ve been inundated with calls,” Chidester said. “It’s a big relief for them.”

Base stations are staffed with mobile intensive-care nurses who are specifically trained and certified to give paramedics directions over the radio.

The county now has 23 base stations, with the addition of Long Beach. The hospital had been the only one of 13 trauma centers in the county without one. In July 2003, the county required all trauma centers to operate base stations.

Trauma centers receive at least $250,000 a year from the county to run their stations, depending on the number of calls they receive.

In addition, Long Beach Memorial spent about $150,000 on the necessary radio and transmission equipment, said Richard DeCarlo, senior vice president of operations for the hospital. And the medical center will spend more than $350,000 annually for additional nurses and training.

But DeCarlo said the investment is worth it. “It’s a real recruitment draw for nursing staff,” he said.

Samantha Verga, a newly certified mobile intensive-care nurse, was eager to take her first paramedic call Tuesday, about a patient with chest pains and shortness of breath.

“I jumped off the seat when the bell rang,” she said.