In the summer of 2005, it took nearly an hour for a Battle Creek nursing home patient, complaining of chest pains, to get to the hospital in Norfolk.

There were no EMTs immediately available to put the patient into an ambulance, and first responders, with far less training, are prohibited from transporting a patient, said Norfolk Sen. Mike Flood.

“Wouldn’t it be better to get the patient on his or her way to the hospital rather than wait around for an out-of-town agency to respond to the call?” Flood said during a hearing on his bill, which would allow first responders to transport patients.

The nursing home resident would have been at the hospital in 15 minutes if his bill (LB244) had been law, Flood said.

Another supporter of Flood’s bill described a situation where first responders in Comstock decided to take a little boy to the Broken Bow hospital rather than wait for the nearest legally qualified volunteer, who was 45 minutes away.

The volunteers “were severely reprimanded by the Department of Health … for saving the boy’s life,” said Larry Ball of Ball Insurance Services.

A frustrated Flood also described his frustration with waiting 14 months for the state Emergency Medical Services board to find a solution. He has introduced bills two years in a row trying to focus attention on the issue.

“It is clear the task force (set up to look at the issue) has made little progress,” he said.

Flood listed several potential compromise solutions: allowing first responders to begin the transport but allowing a higher level of service to take over en route; allowing first responders with a little extra training to transport; allowing first responders to transport in dire situations where additional personnel are absolutely unavailable; providing intensive training for those who cannot pass the National Registry exam.

“Bottom line, I am looking for solutions, not excuses, and I am quite frankly tired of waiting,” he told members of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

“I can tell you that the answer should never be letting a patient lie on the pavement or at the nursing home or on the kitchen floor in his house while we call four or five different departments looking for an EMT,” Flood said.

Several members of the state board opposed the bill during the Wednesday hearing and said a task force looking at the issue will meet Feb. 10.

“The real problem is recruitment and retention” in volunteer departments, said Bruce Beins, chairman of the board of Emergency Medical Services.

The state’s volunteer system “is teetering on the edge in many areas of the state” because of the lack of volunteers, he said.

Flood’s bill puts the public at risk and first responders in an uncomfortable position, Beins said.

It is “treating the symptoms and not treating the disease at all,” he said.

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.