Lakewood Ambulance out of business

[lets get the facts please]

George wrote:

It's interesting that the majority of posts on this site are from Lakewood Ambulance supporters, who seem mostly interested in engaging in personal attacks, running down other ambulance services, finding blame, pointing fingers, blah, blah, blah. To me that speaks volumes about the character and professionalism of this group.
Maybe they need to remember: "Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

I agree Geroge. Personal attacks and finding blame etc. are not going to solve this problem. We as a community need to move past this petty bickering and finger pointing and work for a solution to this problem.

[Dr Know]

The truth is, Lakewood started service to the community in 1991, before Jim Robertson, and before you. It served the community unselfishly until July of of 07, when a young lady, her mom and dad took over. A new board was appointed who lost respect and confidence with the communities it served. Jim announced he went from a volunteer department, to an all paid department with pay raises. He added new employees, bought new equipment, and a new cot, new computers, and plenty of supplies etc. etc. He must tighten his belt different than I do. The board announced they restructed the way they did business, and guess what? They closed the business. The real work was done by a long list of volunteers, and a hard working community long before Jim Robertson showed up. When the volunteers left, no one was willing to volunteer anymore. Volunteers work around the clock but with no pay, thats what volunteers do.

do you really know wrote:

Jim robertson has busted his butt since day one at that company, tring to keep the doors open, he looked at things from every point of view and thightend the belt where ever he could. People don't understand how much money it takes to run an ambulance company, do people know he's is working nearly round the clock even now to make sure things are shut down properly knowing that he probably won't get any more pay checks. That's the kind of guy he is. And you want to know the worst thing, he had that service working, things were starting to get cleaned up after the fiasco the last director left that station it. But with minimal supplys, limited man power and working out a broken down, nearly condemed farmhouse, he kept that bussiness running, but stupid board members who know nothing about EMS thought they didn't need an ambulance. Well let me tell you something, when your woken up in the middle of the night with a crushing chest pain that radiates down your left arm and your minutes from death, your going to call an ambulance and in the 25 minutes it takes mercy to get there your going to wish jim robertson and the rest of lakewood ems was there . This decision will cause so many people to suffer, How many I wonder will die while these townships take out bids for a new service. Think about that, And the next time you bash a hero like Jim, know what the heck yuor talking about. <quoted text>

[Ron]

Yogi Berra supposedly once said "It's like de javu, all over again". Back in the 70s, I too took over an ambulance service that was in the middle of a political quagmire. BPOH Ambulance in Delton Michigan was a mess. The hired manager/operator was a bit of a cowboy, but a smooth talking one. When I was given the contract to manage the service ( a service that I was currently volunteering for) he persuaded all but one of the volunteers to go with him to compete with us on a private basis. The one who stayed, Dave Double, was a close friend of mine and my run partner as well. It so happened that he had a brother-in-law from Lake O.( Marv Westendorp was his name and, although he was knee deep in the operation of the Lake Odessa Ambulance service, he saw the extreme need that wee had in Delton and came down to volunteer with us on week-ends when he wasn't on call in Lake O, because that's what Lake O people do. A rural area can never support a full time private ambulance service because the amount of calls can't generate the dollars for paid attendants so there needs to be a structured system of paid (poorly) "volunteers". It seems that it is time to take a giant step back to a better way and become what y'all were in the past.

And thanks to you Marv. Your help saved our service

[Paramedic from the past]

Now that I have read all of the above garbage, it is plain to see why the Village of Lake Odessa dumped the whole lot of ungrateful “volunteers” back in the early 1990s. They couldn’t win a recall election against the village counsel then and as most of use in the EMS community knew then, they sure couldn’t run an ambulance service. Put me down as glad to see them go.