As you read this, the Memorial Regional Health Emergency Medical Services crew is, as always, standing by, ready to respond at a moment’s notice if you, a loved one or neighbor needs medical assessment and care.
Should you awaken with chest pain in the middle of the night and call 911, it’s their ambulance crew that will rush to your house.
If you get in a bad car accident somewhere within their 2,700-square-mile primary response zone, they’ll likely be among the first on scene.
“We are responsible for a huge area,” said Justin Doubrava, MRH EMS Manager and Paramedic. “Some places take us an hour and a half just to get to. We’re thankful to be part of a hospital that supports EMS and understands that what we do is essential to the community.”
While we hope you don’t need their services, if you ever do, we’re sure you’ll be glad to know that MRH EMS is well-trained, well-staffed and well-equipped. Their 17 crew members—eight paramedics and nine EMTs—rotate shifts around the clock to ensure a rapid response whenever an emergency call comes in.
Not including facility-to-facility transports, MRH EMS takes anywhere from one to 10 calls a day. In 2023, they responded to 1,535 calls. Of these, 441 were Advanced Life Support calls, meaning that crew members performed advanced lifesaving procedures, such as intubation and cardiac life support.
On a busy day, multiple calls can happen simultaneously. That’s why the crew schedule includes back-up on-call teams with four ambulances at their disposal. Some crew members are also trained at the Critical Care Level, which is an endorsement from the state that allows them to transport the most critically ill patients to facilities with higher levels of care while managing ventilators and IV pumps with several medications.
In addition to responding to emergency and transfer calls, MRH EMS staffs more than 30 special events each year, ensuring emergency medical coverage for popular community attractions like the rodeo, Whittle the Wood and football games. They also provide required continuing education courses to their own staff as well as clinicians in other hospital departments, Tri-State and Craig Fire Rural Protection District.
Plans to Break Ground by 2026
There’s no doubt MRH EMS is a busy, vital hospital department. But for decades now, they’ve been operating out of a hodgepodge of make-do locations. When they need to be near the hospital and sleep on-call, they bunk in the EMS “ready room,” attached to the MRH Emergency Department and including two bedrooms, desks, a refrigerator and a break area shared with nurses. The current ambulance garage, attached to MRH, houses the primary ambulance for the day, but the other three ambulances are parked downtown. The department also lacks a training facility—somewhere to gather for all the classes they routinely teach.
But now, plans are underway to build a new EMS station and training center—complete with its own sleeping quarters, kitchen, ambulance bays and parking lot—by 2026. The 8,000-square-foot facility will be located between Colorado Northwestern Community College and the MRH Emergency Department. A $135,000 grant from the Local Marketing District is funding the planning process, and Doubrava said that additional grants will be secured to pay for the cost of construction.
Not only will the new MRH EMS station help make EMS operations more efficient, enabling optimal response times and staffing, it will also bring new job opportunities to the community.
As it stands, Doubrava said, only about half the current MRH EMS crew lives in Craig. The remainder live in communities such as Grand Junction, Steamboat and Oak Creek, making call schedules tricky. However, once MRH EMS qualifies with the State of Colorado as an official EMS training center, it will be able to offer EMT training classes to Craig community members as well.
“The new training center space will allow us to train new EMTs and offer recertification courses (such as Hazmat, Stop the Bleed, BLS, PALS, ACLS, NRP and more) as well as refresher courses up to the Critical Care Level,” Doubrava said, explaining that CNCC used to offer an EMT program but shuttered it several years ago due to low enrollment. CNCC supports the plan for MRH EMS to start up an EMT training program again. “If we can train up our own EMTs from the Craig community, this will help keep the town and local economy going strong.” Doubrava added that he hopes to offer the first EMT training class to community members in the summer of 2025.
“The completion of the EMS station project will ensure a sustainable home for the MRH EMS service for decades to come,” Doubrava said.
