Southern Chester County EMS (Medic 94) has stepped up its operations and protocols to deal with the coronavirus challenge in the region.

Medic 94 is the advanced life support system that operates as an emergency room on wheels and responds to calls that are life-threatening events, like heart attacks and extreme trauma, in the Oxford and Avon Grove area. It functions out of offices and vehicle bays at Jennersville Hospital.

With the arrival in mid-March of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 17-member staff of paramedics faced the increasing challenge of not only rescuing victims of injuries and sudden illnesses, but keeping themselves and their patients safe from the spread of the infection.

Medic 94 CEO Bob Hotchkiss is saddled with its management tasks including receiving and obeying federal, state and county directives and overseeing equipment needs. He has also had to respond daily to new and changing situations, working out solutions with his crew through frequent information sharing meetings.

When the virus protocols arrived, his first task was to secure the necessary supplies. Sometimes that was as simple as ordering a new supply of face masks or protective gloves. Other times, however, it involved getting inventive with equipment management.

In the bay beside the Medic 94 vehicles, Hotchkiss set up a cabinet – it looks like a metallic bedside table – that contains materials that are needed to take out on calls, like masks, gloves, thermometers and gowns. Sitting on the top of that cabinet are bottles of cleaners to use on the vehicles and personal cleaning.

The cabinet is well-stocked, Hotchkiss said, and he endeavors to maintain a 90-day supply of items.

Nearby on a table is a stack of green wristbands. Those wristbands, Hotchkiss explained, are placed on his paramedics after they get sanitized first thing during their shifts. The wristbands give the message to others at incidents that his team members are already safely cleaned.

There are times he gets creative as well, like when he ordered a supply of waterproof umbrella bags which the paramedics access to place used medical equipment in for sanitizing later.

He also obtained a stack of paper grocery bags and placed them in the medic vehicles for holding anything that needs to be disposed of safely after the call and separated immediately from the sanitized objects.

Faced with a scarcity of hand sanitizers, Hotchkiss ordered a load of shop rags and soaked them in a sterilizing solution he made with alcohol. They work just as well, he said.

In addition to the equipment needs prompted by the crisis, there was a significant amount of information that had to be processed and shared with the crew and others.

Hotchkiss said in the first few weeks of the shutdown, he was forced to make policy changes every day.

“It’s slowed down now to about once a week,” he said. To date, they have recorded responding to ten COVID-19 calls.

Still, he meets with his paramedics often to go over their experiences and give ideas of things that could make their jobs easier or more effective. He also consults with other first-responders in southern Chester County to share advice and offer help.

Chuck Freese, who is the emergency management coordinator for municipalities in the southern Chester County region, received high praise from Hotchkiss.

“I call him up and tell him I need something, and in an hour I have it,” he said.

The same, he said, goes for the county and local nonprofits who are making contributions, issuing grants and even sending Girl Scout cookies.

Another valuable link to the Medic-94 response to the COVID-19 crisis is Dr. Joshua Simon, the medical director for the Jennersville Hospital emergency room as well as Medic 94.

Regarding procedures, Simon advises the crew on what to do and not do medically in a variety of situations.

The paramedics of Medic 94 rely on computers in their vehicles. As soon as a call comes in, it appears on the computer screen in the dashboard with information about what kind of injury or illness it is, and if it is respiratory in nature. This allows the paramedics to know how much protective gear to put on.

As time goes by, Hotchkiss said, the crisis will recede and become a thing of the past in the county and the country. Belief in the future has led the paramedics like Norman Madison to proceed with their jobs fearlessly.

“I’m not scared. I just have to make sure to wash my hands more often, change my shoes and carry extra protective equipment,” he said.

In the future, when he and his crew look back at the pandemic and the lessons that were learned, Hotchkiss said a lot of the information will be useful.

For one thing, the social distancing that has been necessitated by the virus has already proliferated and expanded the use of telecommunication. He believes those lessons and practices will be part of healthcare and emergency responses in the future, not to mention that the first-responders will have become much more adept at putting on protective equipment.

Contact tracing will gain in importance as well, he said.

Hotchkiss also believes that there may be a change sociologically in how people interact. In fact, it could be that shaking hands, even when the health crisis is over, will be a thing of the past.

“We’ll be better prepared, too,” he said.

For his part, Dr.  Simon said he has learned what works and what doesn’t with the virus. He’s also come to understand how the virus spreads in the body.

Overall, Hotchkiss acknowledged that in the face of a pandemic which has been “horrible” and tragic in many areas throughout the nation, Chester County has been functioning extremely well and, so far, has avoided the worst. 

“The county has been great based on help and communication,” he said.

Inasmuch as he and his crew have seen patients with all levels of COVID-19 [including one of his own members who has since recovered], he was asked if he had advice for people who are ambivalent about taking protective measures. He said engaging in the politics of COVID-19 is “above my pay level,” especially since he is learning more about it all the time.

He added, however that among people in the medical profession, there is this expression: “If you die from this disease, you die alone surrounded by people dressed like spacemen.”