The Mount Vernon city council approved a plan to map the city’s boundaries for an EMS district, the next steps to establishing the district moving forward.
Lisbon-Mount Vernon Ambulance director Jacob Lindauer said that the maps will be completed and then approved by the City of Mount Vernon, and provide the community another chance to weigh in on the matter. A similar measure took place at the Lisbon City Council Nov. 24.
Citizen Myrt Bowers spoke in favor of moving forward with the EMS district, noting the changes that have happened in health care in the past 60 years.
Bowers explained that the first ambulances in the area weren’t established until 1970. That first ambulance service was only in the community of Cedar Rapids and took a few more years to establish in the rest of the county.
“When I first started as a nurse, I was a float nurse, which meant I went to whatever department needed help,” Bowers said. “There wasn’t an E.R. at the time, so there was always a staffing problem or department that needed help.”
Iowa hasn’t designated EMS as an essential service, like police or firefighters, but EMS are still saving lives.
“Having items like a flag car who gets to the scene first and reports what they are seeing to the hospitals is an amazing resource,” Bowers said. “Lindauer and paramedics on scene are providing vital information to the hospitals about the conditions of patients before they even arrive and the care they are offering at that time.”
If a person is in respiratory distress, paramedics can intubate and supply with oxygen until they get to the hospital.
Those items didn’t happen in the 1960s.
Mount Vernon and Lisbon would be some of the first EMS districts in Linn County, the third in the state of Iowa.
“I’m here to ask the community to be in favor of this district,” Bowers said.
Lindauer explained that it continues to get more and more challenging to provide services when reimbursements are stagnating while the cost to provide care only goes up.
“By utilizing Code 375g, we’ll be able to collect support like the fire departments do to help provide care,” Lindauer said.
Linn County and Johnson County have passed their resolutions to map districts. Jones County and Cedar County have their own districts established, with LMVAS being reimbursed for any Jones County calls at the moment.
The district for LMVAS will cover the entirety of the 52314 and 52253 zip codes, then out to Hwy. 13 and rural Putnam township, as well as the Sutliff area of Johnson County.
The maps will be created and back for approval soon, with a special election slated to happen in March 2026.