MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — By November, Baldwin County could be without an ambulance service. That's because Grady EMS in Atlanta told the county they're not renewing their contract.
Some folks in Milledgeville rely heavily on the ambulance services, and that is particularly true for the 150 people who stay at Milledgeville's Georgia War Veterans Home. For them, it's priceless.
“I'm trying to do better. Physical therapy, bending my knees,” Jonathan Norwood said.
It’s his fifth year at the nursing home. He’s in therapy for one leg crushed in a car accident.
“It fractured in three places,” he remembers.
The other was lost to diabetes.
“The VA had to amputate,” Norwood said.
However, according to Georgia War Veterans Home Health Services Director Irona Liggens-Spikes, Norwood isn’t alone.
“Majority of them don't walk, we have a lot of them that's in wheelchairs," Liggen-Spikes said. "A lot of them are bedbound.”
She says the veterans' ages and ailments add up to a lot.
“A lot of them are chronic care patients. They have pulmonary, they have heart problems,” Liggens-Spikes said.
The Georgia War Veterans Home says they can provide basic care to their patients– like patching up a cut – but they can't do much more than that. For almost anything else, they rely on ambulance services.
“We do not provide any IV therapy. We can only do CPR, and we don’t have medications,” she said.
That's because they're not a hospital, they’re a nursing home.
She says they send 25 to 30 patients a month by ambulance to the hospital, and at least 10 get hospitalized.
“They need the ambulance service to attain advanced care for survival,” Liggens-Spikes said.
Norwood says he's used one five times already.
“There's so many people here,” he explained. “Most of them, that haven't passed away, have used ambulance services.”
Grady EMS in Atlanta says starting in November, they will no longer provide ambulance services to Baldwin County.
“If they don't show up, we might not make it,” Norwood said.
Baldwin Commissioners say they're discussing how to replace the service.
That ambulance service, Grady EMS, is connected to the state's largest hospital.
In recent years, Grady Hospital has been forced to serve more people as staffing struggles and closures affect other Georgia healthcare systems.
Last November, Grady became metro Atlanta's lone level-one trauma center. The hospital reaffirmed its commitment to the city and government officials pumped $130 million into the hospital to increase bed capacity.
In 2018, Grady took control of EMS services in South Fulton County adding to their service area.
Right now, Grady EMS serves 132 square miles of Fulton County, but they also go into places like Hancock and Ben Hill counties.
We reached out to Grady EMS about why they’re choosing to not renew their contract with Baldwin County, and they did not get back to us.