CRANBERRY TWP — UPMC Passavant's advanced response unit, an SUV equipped with medical equipment and staffed with advanced care providers, is poised to launch Aug. 30.

The unit, which UPMC dubbed the ARU, will be dispatched through 911, and will respond to mutual-aid situations that require extra personnel and high-level calls. Staffing the SUV will be paramedics, pre-hospital registered nurses with intensive care and emergency experience and MedEvac flight nurses and paramedics.

Jay Grinnell, founder of Harmony EMS, said the ARU can be helpful given the issues ambulance companies in the area deal with, particularly with staffing shortages.

“We appreciate UPMC's effort. I think it's a good effort, and I think it has good possibilities,” Grinnell said. “If implemented and utilized correctly by the (local ambulance) services, it will be a great benefit.”

The ARU will be stationed in Cranberry, and will serve Cranberry and Jackson townships; Harmony, Mars, Seven Fields and Zelienople; and parts of northern Allegheny and eastern Beaver counties, and will be dispatched to critical-care incidents as well as for calls for patients with challenging or unpredictable needs.

“The advanced care background of our ARU crew really offers a unique ability to provide clinical expertise and on-scene assistance,” said Passavant emergency services director Elizabeth Tedesco. “The team will be especially helpful for high-level calls.”

Grinnell said he predicts the ARU will primarily be used for advanced life support calls.

“If it's used properly, it will be for life-threatening calls,” he said. “Also, occasionally, there are times right now where Cranberry, Harmony and Quality (EMS) don't have a unit available, where we're all out.”

Filling a need

It's precisely those mutual-aid calls — to help when an ambulance company needs assistance or when they're tied up elsewhere — when the ARU can be most helpful to nearby ambulance companies.

UPMC told local ambulance companies of its plan for the ARU roughly two weeks ago, Grinnell said, and has implemented some changes as a result of input from Cranberry, Harmony and Quality ambulance companies.

One change is the inclusion of a representative from each EMS company on an interview board to ensure UPMC doesn't hire from the services, something Grinnell said would only exacerbate the situation the ARU was created to help solve.

In recent years, the problem of medic staffing has been worsened by the reimbursement rate to ambulance companies from Medicare, Grinnell said.

“Mutual-aid calls can strain EMS resources, taking a crew out of service to assist,” UPMC Passavant president Susan Hoolahan said. “We saw a need and an opportunity to help our EMS partners. By reorganizing some of our own elite resources, we can provide a significant and much-needed benefit in the communities we serve.”