Lincoln County Ambulance District

This years awardee covers 630 square miles, of suburban and rural Missouri.  Since 1974, they have provided excellent and responsive emergency medical care.

In the past ten years the county has been one of the fastest growing counties in Missouri and the service has grown with the county. With an excellent Board of Directors and an Administration that thinks ahead and are not afraid to take risks, the District has grown quickly and doubled their call volume.

While increasing the number of ambulances from 5 to 7 and building new bases, the staff and crews working together have built several service lines from 911 to basic transfer, to critical care transports and a robust MIH/CP program.

The best new service line though is the jail program that helps underserved individuals with their withdrawal from opioids while incarcerated.  We no longer find it acceptable to watch someone withdraw in jail with only a blanket and a cold concrete floor. We have the medications to stop the withdraw sypmtoms and we have the relationships with peer support and Community behavioral Health Liaisons to get them into treatment as soon as they are released. The team has even built a relationship with Mercy Virtual to offer virtual substance use programs to those released to the streets.

While this started as a grant program, it was noted as such a success that the Sheriff put the medication on his budget while the District still provides the CP’s to administer the medication.

Their Chief is quoted “I have seen the growth in the crews and I am proud of how they have met my challenge to grow, lead and expand our services into the public and get involved in every aspect of public and community healthcare. We still run emergency calls and they are not going to go away, but some of our high utilizers are actually seeking help from specialist and primary care when before they would have called 911. It’s not about lowering our call volume but its about patient centered care and developing care plans for patients that go beyond a ride to the closest ED. If you have a major trauma in our District you will get the best paramedics. But if you live here and have a chronic illness and you don’t know where to turn, you will also get the best paramedics.”