Interview with Gillett Area Ambulance Service Director Tracy Ondik, Part I
7 min readAmbulances outside of the Gillett Area Ambulance Service building / Image Source: www.gaasinc.com/
Wendy interviews Gillett Area Ambulance Service (GAAS) Director Tracy Ondik
I had recently learned about a program that the service was asked to help the State Pilot. I had the chance to interview GAAS Service Director Tracy Ondik about that program, and ask him other questions about what GAAS does.
(This interview will be divided into two blog posts so all my readers get a real idea of what GAAS has for the people they serve)
Q: Can you tell us what your position is with Gillett Area Ambulance, and how long you have been with them?
“I am one of the seven Advanced Emergency Medical Technicians on our department. I also serve as a Board of Director as well as our department’s Service Director. I have been a member of GAAS, Inc. since July of 1995.”
Q: What made you decide to join GAAS?
“My youngest brother was involved in a serious ATV accident when he was 12 years old. He was nearly killed. After this, a member of my church, who was an EMT for GAAS, Inc. at the time and the mother of my brother’s best friend, told me to come to a meeting and check into becoming a member. I drove for a few months and entered EMT class right after.”
Q: Do you have other family members involved with emergency services as well?
“My wife Trisha is also one of our longtime members and Advanced EMTs. I met her when I was taking EMT class and within less than a year she was a member and enrolled in an EMT class of her own. GAAS, Inc. is rich in family traditions of multiple generations and family members being members of the department. It doesn’t take long and our members fit into a larger, extended squad family who share in our ups and downs, highs and lows.”
Q: I have heard that GAAS is part of a pilot program. Can you explain what the program is for and who created it?
“There has been recent legislation passed that will help Wisconsin EMS, especially those in a more rural setting, provide even better care to our patients. One such change to our system is what is called “Flexible Staffing”. The idea of this is for an ambulance service to be able to legally provide a higher level of care to its patients based on the level of licensed personnel responding to that particular call and not necessarily at the department’s lower license level. For example; GAAS, Inc. is licensed at the Advanced EMT Level with the State of Wisconsin. Our operational plan (way too complicated to explain in this forum) requires us to provide care on our first out ambulance at the AEMT level 24/7.
Let’s say that we have 2 paramedics and a nurse that live in our area and want to run on our ambulance service. We could, under this flexible staffing legislation, rewrite our operational plan to allow us to have these paramedics or nurse respond as they are available and provide care to their higher level rather than our AEMT level. Right now, we are licensed as an AEMT department and cannot provide care higher than that, even if we had 2 paramedics on an ambulance.
Of the over 800 EMS Departments in Wisconsin, GAAS, Inc. was one of the 17 around the state asked to help the State EMS Office pilot this flexible staffing initiative. You always want to stay on the good side of the State EMS Office! While we are not immediately looking to do this upgrade to paramedic care, we want to have the groundwork laid and relationships in place so when the life forces us to change, we will be ready for it.
The pilot program also includes some Wisconsin Ambulance Run Data System (WARDS) and EMS E-Licensing upgrades as well.
Q: How big of an area does GAAS serve?
“We cover the City of Gillett, Village of Suring and Townships of Breed, Gillett, How, Maple Valley and Underhill in Oconto County and the Township of Green Valley in Shawano County. This equates to 220 square miles running from just north of Krakow to the middle of Anderson Lake and from the Menominee Indian Reservation to the line with Oconto Falls. The area has around 9,000 full time residents on average throughout the year. The population increases with tourism in the summer and fall months.”
We also hold Mutual Aid and/or Coverage agreements with neighboring EMS departments like Mountain Ambulance Service, Oconto Falls Area Ambulance Service and Shawano Ambulance Service. Our department is also licensed to provide Interfacility Transfers so you may notice us doing prescheduled patient transfers for local healthcare facilities, Hospice or St. Clare Memorial Hospital in Oconto Falls. Because our department’s primary license is for 911 emergency response, we can only provide patient transfers if our 911 coverage remains uninterrupted.
Q: Besides running the ambulance for calls, are there other things the squad does in the community?
“Yes, we are quite active throughout our communities. Some of the activities we are asked to participate in or stand by at include:
- 8-10 High School Football Game Standby – Gillett and Suring
- Manned First Aid Booth at the 4-day Oconto County Youth Fair in August
- Conquer the Hill 5/10K and various Suring Labor Day activities (pulls or demo derby)
- Gillett School’s Tiger Chase 5K
- Gillett Diamond Club summer girls and boys baseball/softball weekend tournaments
- Green Valley/Morgan Fire Department Picnic
- Community Organization First Aid/CPR presentations (church, youth, scouts, daycare)
- National “Stop the Bleed” Program
- Suring National Night Out
- Local and Regional Mass Casualty Incident Trainings and Drills
“In order to staff these events, we have to compensate our members because they are acting in an official capacity or providing a service for the organization. While a donation from the hosting organization is much appreciated, we do not charge for these services. We use general budget funds to pay our staff for these events.”
“In 2018 our EMRs, EMTs and AEMTs volunteered an extra 413 hours in community type outreach above and beyond being on call and responding to emergencies.”
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Q: There have news stories in recent months about rural rescue services needing people on their staffs. Is GAAS having that issue as well?
“Yes and No. We actually have some competition for hours on our schedule and have for some time now. This competition is a double-edged sword in that competition helps to maintain our 24/7 coverage but actually hurts in recruitment and retention of new members. I believe that there will come a time in the not so distant future that we will be exploring full-time day employees to bridge any gaps in volunteerism that may come our way. We still have a few members, my wife and I included, who remember the days of 100% volunteer members taking call time and responding to calls. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.”
“One of the biggest issues threatening rural EMS in my opinion is that the public needs to understand that EMS is not slapping Band-Aids on people and driving like crazy to the hospital while holding a patient’s hand in the back of the rig. EMS providers are licensed by the State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services, EMS Section and acquiring and maintaining that license is a daunting task. The educational requirements, testing, licensing and maintenance of one’s skills are that of a full-time profession and are often times being undertaken by people as a volunteer or part-time paid provider. In all honesty, we, like most departments, have a hard time getting qualified people who can pass the educational requirements to obtain a license to practice. If they are lucky enough to become licensed, they need to fit some sort of commitment to the ambulance service into their personal lives so they can help GAAS, Inc. stay solvent. It is a constant struggle informing people that EMS can no longer just “take anybody who wants to help” per se. The requirements of 2019 and beyond just don’t allow that anymore.”
_Interview End_
My husband Pete is another one of the AEMT’s that Tracy mentioned in my interview, and I can vouch for the fact that maintaining the licensing is a daunting task. The squad members have to keep up with training so they can provide the best possible care to the patients, and that training is a large investment of time. Even though our family has had to juggle scheduling for Pete to maintain his requirements with the ambulance service, I wouldn’t change a thing. I have long-ago lost count of how many people who have come up to him on the street to express their gratitude for all he had done on an ambulance call for them or their loved ones. When I see people do that, I feel like it would be selfish of me to deny Pete that chance to help others in such a profound way.
I will continue with Part II of my interview with Tracy Ondik in my next article!!
Connect with Tracy Ondik on Facebook
Contact the Gillett Area Ambulance Service
(920) 855-6060 (Phone)
(920) 855-6030 (Fax)
P.O. Box 627, Gillett, WI 54124