FL County Runs Smooth EMS Integration

Sept. 24 -- TAVARES, FL -- Lake EMS will officially integrate into Lake County government on October 1, and officials say the transition couldn't be smoother.

Lake EMS' Executive Director Jerry Smith has worked for months with County Manager Jeff Cole and Commissioner Tim Sullivan to make sure everything is in place for Lake EMS employees to smoothly become County Commission employees.

The newly minted Lake EMS Office of Emergency Medical Services will spend the next few months after the transition working out kinks in the joint system.

Their current projection is that come February the system will be seamless.

Earlier this year, Lake EMS began taking steps towards integration by cancelling contracts with other providers and slowly moving into county operations.

According to Smith, this mostly meant getting Lake County's Human Resources department to prepare Lake EMS employees to switch over, carrying out an orientation and setting up each employee to begin receiving updated benefits and paychecks.

"Any real transition is going to be on the administrative side, and that's been going very smoothly," Smith said. "All of our employees have completed orientation to become Board of County Commissioners employees."

Smith said that the months of preparation include vacating their current offices and moving to a new site in the County Administration building in Tavares. Lake EMS in April moved to terminate its building lease in Mount Dora.

Smith said that nearly everything has already been put in place for the move, and they even decided to keep the name Lake EMS to assure people that the same people serving them on September 30 are the people serving them after October 1.

"If you do a name change, they think the people are changing," Smith said. "But the people aren't changing."

Things will largely be the same, Smith said, with improved services in the future and a new deployment plan under development.

Lake EMS will join the rest of Lake County's Public Safety offices in getting a new computer-assisted dispatch system in September, but that process can take between 12 and 18 months to see the software integrated.

The change nearest from the transition date will be Lake County Fire and Rescue joining EMS in ambulance operations.

Fire and Rescue will add an ambulance in Astor next year, and hopes to supplement the work of Lake EMS in rural areas.

According to Smith, Fire and Rescue's rural operations will allow EMS to better serve urban regions.

Services aside, employees will only see small but significant adjustments.

Primarily the new, more comprehensive benefits package and an alternate payday, as Lake EMS and the Board of County Commissioners send out checks on different weeks.

Lake Emergency Medical Services was originally created out of the dissolution of Lake-Sumter EMS, a joint venture between Lake and Sumter Counties to provide emergency medical services to both counties.

When Sumter pulled out of the agreement in 2011, Lake County decided to keep the program running, as it was still cost-effective.

The transition to dissolve Lake EMS and bring the service under the county umbrella came after a consulting agency spent 20 months starting in 2016 surveying potential alternatives.

Integration was found to be the best option for the future, with potential savings of $500,000 in the first year.

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