Colden, N.Y. (WBEN) - Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz announced Thursday for the first time in Erie County government history, the county will now provide ambulatory services.
"This was an issue that needed to be resolved, which is the lack of quick and reliable ambulance service for many of the communities od Erie County," said the executive. "If you live in the City of Buffalo, if you live in some of the inner ring suburbs, if you call and need an ambulance service, it is there very quickly. But if you do that in some of our more rural communities, especially in the southtowns of Erie County, and here in ski country, you can wait a long time before an ambulance shows."
Over the next couple of months, Erie County residents will soon see five new ambulances, fully-stocked and with full crews, servicing areas of the county that may not have as immediate of access to EMS care.
"These ambulances will be outfitted with life-saving technology, including utilizing current LifePak monitors for cardiac monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, cardiac defibrillation, and measuring the amount of oxygen in the blood," said Poloncarz.
In addition, Poloncarz mentions that the county is in the process of building a full-time ambulatory, EMS training facility in the Town of Aurora.
"There are requests for proposals that are going out on that right now. We do expect that within the next couple of years, we will have that new facility up, but we knew there was a need that need that needed to be met immediately."
Poloncarz mentions that this was a bipartisan effort, and thanked the Erie County Legislature for passing the funds required to not only start the ambulatory services, but to build the ambulatory service/EMS training facility.