Emergency and medical services in the Eastern Cape has been a troublesome and controversial topic for a number of years, but a new service provider in the Nelson Mandela Metro and surrounds aims to raise the bar.
RELAY Emergency Medical Services (EMS) was recently established by well-known PE-based company, CompSol (an IOD claims administrator and management company), and since day one the team’s number one objective is to provide the highest level of care when lives are at stake.
CEO and founder of CompSol, Fritz Lüttich says: “We applied the same principles to RELAY EMS that made CompSol a success. Inefficiencies in the IOD claim process opened a gap for a company such as CompSol, and by developing and applying the right processes, systems, training and people we have been able to ensure our clients payment by the Compensation Fund.
“We have since acknowledged that in the Nelson Mandela Metro and surrounds, emergency and medical services suffer from huge issues such as being understaffed, under resourced and poorly equipped. There is also the global “brain drain” which is taking many of South Africa’s trained and experienced paramedics offshore.”
While Lüttich won’t be drawn into generalising as there are good emergency response outfits out there, he had seen enough to be concerned at the quality of treatment being received by patients, some of them in life threatening situations, which prompted him to launch the service.
“There are three levels of emergency medical care practitioners – Basic, Intermediate and Advanced. You can imagine that advanced skills are required to manage certain emergency conditions or situations.
This is sadly not always the case. You also need appropriate vehicles and advanced equipment. For example, we are the only service in the area with an ICU incubator – essential for premature babies. Importantly, your paramedics need to arrive on the scene fresh and motivated – because of the brain drain, many are working lengthy shifts which has obvious ramifications,” says Lüttich.
In the same way that CompSol filled a very real gap in the workman’s compensation market nationally, RELAY EMS aims to provide the same level of quality and professionalism for emergency medical and ambulance services in Nelson Mandela Metro and surrounds.
“In order to offer a professional and often life-saving service, you need to invest extensively in people and equipment. In an industry that surprisingly has little government regulation, we would like to work with other operators in self-regulating and set the highest standard possible.”
Alan Straton
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