Two Views: The Mobile Medical Industry Needs South Carolina’s Optimism

Two Views is a new column from veteran EMS technologist and critic Jonathon Feit that examines current industry issues from the perspectives of both frontline personnel and leadership/management. In this column he reports from the 2022 South Carolina EMS Symposium.

The Crew View

South Carolina named Ryan Thorne its EMS Director of the Year for 2021. He is the founder and CEO of Greenville-based Thorne Ambulance Service. 

Thorne’s win mattered as a symbol of what comes next. He received the award on his 35th birthday, which makes him a millennial—part of the same cohort our industry (and country) fancies doesn’t want to work. This year his ambulance service celebrates its dozen-year anniversary. He is a medic who has been a firefighter, is beloved by his employees, and is admired by the hospitals with which he partners (I spoke with some of their liaisons). He still runs overnight shifts on the truck. 

In short, either Thorne is a fantasy unicorn who ticks every box and exists only in the dreams of our industry’s saltiest veterans, or he represents our absolutely obtainable future. He is, in fact, a real boy, so the answer must be the latter. 

Thorne’s success derives from what may be his most compelling characteristic, one every mobile medical professional can emulate with ease: Namely, he brims with empathy. From the vantage of a fellow entrepreneur, I can assure you he has been in business long enough to sport scars and jaded feelings. Instead, he starts each morning by posting motivational quotes for his team members on social media, tagging the company so they don’t go unseen. 

Thorne will talk with everyone to find common ground. He is hesitant to preach to the choir and attends events like the Startup Health Festival, where the principal attendees are insurers and healthcare technology executives—because if you plan to play in someone else’s sandbox, you'd better know their passions. Wearing both patches and toiling in the trenches rewarded Thorne with fluency in the languages of both the red and the white; our industry has few similar human Rosetta Stones (Mike Taigman, Kris Kaull, and Tim Nowak spring to mind). His New England drive found a home in the Deep South’s commitment to commitment. 

Not everyone straddles so many lines, but that doesn’t make it impossible. The daily grind gets in the way too often, but what if it turns out that all those who invest their life forces in our industry—no matter who cuts their check—share the wish to do well by doing good?  

Management Memo

I have heard countless keynotes in my career, but few have hit every spot as pristinely as the partnership model described by Thornton Kirby of the South Carolina Ambulance Association during the 2022 South Carolina EMS Symposium. Kirby stunned the crowd by saying, “You feel like you’re the redheaded stepchild of the healthcare system? How do you think nurses feel next to doctors?” He explained that doctors feel similarly relative to insurers; and one might imagine insurers feel imposed upon by regulators. (It doesn’t end there, of course—all who work in government are subject to popular whims.) 

Kirby cited pillars of management science, like Lean and Six Sigma (required reading for those who focus on quality control), speaking to the newfound centrality of data in mobile medicine. We’re working at a time when budgets are under knives nationwide, hiring is a universal challenge, and the motivations behind advanced care programs like community paramedicine/mobile integrated health are being questioned. 

Yet Kirby spoke of alignment. He said we have a chance to collaborate and solve huge issues—underserved pediatric needs, chronic and mental health care, and time-sensitive interventions like stroke and STEMI—by working together, systematically and statewide. He referred often to his colleague Neill Cameron—a former regional president of Ogilvy & Mather, a venerated advertising agency—to highlight the vitality of clear, emotionally charged messaging that conveys the present urgency across industry lines. After all, the public needs to understand what happens if mobile medical agencies can’t support themselves—like how a lack of resources translates into dramatically longer times to hand over patients at the emergency department, which compresses the availability of trucks on the street, which slows response times, which counteracts the IHI Triple Aim (better care, better access, lower cost) Kirby himself said is the state hospital association’s polestar. 

The takeaway was unbridled motivation: Kirby said his association’s hospital members believe mobile medicine is in an enviable position our industry does not even realize. Our economic models have yet to catch up, but the world is enamored by trucks and aircraft carrying the most precious cargo (see pretty much every hit television show now, plus new movies coming soon). Our industry’s leaders therefore have a moment—now—to link hands and speak with unified voice, because there is power in numbers.

Jonathon S. Feit, MBA, MA, is cofounder and CEO at Beyond Lucid Technologies and a frequent contributor to multiple EMS platforms. Visit www.beyondlucid.com.