Crawfordsville Fire Department EMS Division Chief Paul Miller has been busy over the past year. Quite busy. While the COVID-19 pandemic shut down many outlets to the community, the fire department paramedics scrambled to find new opportunities to support Crawfordsville and Montgomery County. In a recent personal interview, Miller began with a statement that seems to capture the department’s general reflections on the pandemic.“Out of everything bad, there’s always something good if you’re looking for it, and we’ve been able to find a way to provide good services,” Miller said.
At the beginning of the pandemic, when stay-at-home orders were first implemented, the EMS division of the fire department was eerily quiet.
“For our EMS division to be slow is not a good thing … Our ambulance is really important to bridging access to care,” Miller said.
The Crawfordsville Fire Department’s Community Paramedicine Program is a nationally renowned program that bridges healthcare disparities by providing at-home care to elderly, pregnant and generally at-risk individuals in the Montgomery County community. Once COVID hit, those programs came to a screeching halt, and so did the long-term, intimate relationships those programs fostered.
Miller recalled that during quarantine, “[the paramedics] wanted to see them [their patients] no matter what. They weren’t happy with me or the administration.” Crawfordsville EMS quickly noticed that replacing those personal interactions with Zoom and phone calls was resulting in some serious adverse effects. Emergency calls for suicidal ideation, domestic violence and drug abuse skyrocketed.
“We saw in that month and a half the exact same number of overdoses we did for the entire 2019 year,” Miller said.
He also noted that after the stay-at-home orders were lifted, their emergency services saw patients that were much sicker than usual. “A lot of their disease process was exacerbated because they weren’t able to see their physicians, they weren’t able to access the ER, and they didn’t feel comfortable in doing so,” Chief Miller said. In assessing the effect of lockdown on the Fire Department’s ability to provide care to the community, Chief Miller warned that “if something similar is going to happen again, I don’t know if we can do it the same way. Our patients need us. We need to deliver that care. They need that support.”
While the pandemic put immense pressure on the EMS division and Crawfordsville health services in general, the fire department found opportunities to innovate and respond to the changing needs of a community in crisis. One of these adaptations is the vaccine program, a comprehensive project aimed at delivering immunizations. In partnership with the Indiana State Department of Health, the Community Paramedicine program is working with local schools to ensure kids under 18 are receiving their proper immunizations, along with the COVID vaccine for those who are eligible.
“Since kids were not able to go to their family care physicians [as a result of the pandemic], they weren’t receiving their mandatory school vaccines,” Miller said. “At the time we implemented our vaccine program, roughly only 17 to 19% of kindergarteners statewide were fully immunized. So we started working with the State Department of Health to construct this program, get in the schools, and get kids caught up on immunizations.”
The hard work and dedication of school nurses, alongside the community paramedicine program, provides insight into the ability of community members to step up and overcome evolving challenges.
After enduring a year filled with new challenges and obstacles, Miller provides a clear message to the community to navigate back to life as it was pre-pandemic. When asked what he thinks would be the best way to end the pandemic and get back to normal, Miller responded, “Get the shot. It’s available, it’s safe, and it’s effective.”
As the state has expanded access for more age groups to receive the vaccine, the EMS chief encourages taking advantage of vaccine opportunities to get protected. Miller specifically emphasized the benefits young individuals could receive by getting the vaccine.
“If you are fully vaccinated, you will not miss out [on extracurricular activities] due to quarantine, especially if they are outdoors,” Miller said. As more members of the community begin to get vaccinated, Miller is hopeful that a sense of normalcy will soon return in Crawfordsville.
“I look forward to hugging, shaking hands and seeing people’s faces again,” Miller said. “Make sure you’re getting vaccinated when you’re able to.”
To sign up for your vaccine, visit https://vaccine.coronavirus.in.gov/en-US/.
Written by Neal Hayhurst and Eric Lakomek.
