Page 4 Pinedale Roundup February 2, 2018
EMTs help heart transplant patient
From Sublette County
Rural Health
Care District
PINEDALE – Holidays get the best
of us sometimes, but it didn’t get the best
of a 9-year-old girl who had a recent heart
transplant when she was life-flighted from
Pinedale Medical Clinic to Primary Children
Hospital in Salt Lake City late Christmas
Day night.
In the exchange from the ambulance to the
airplane, the young girl’s BiPap machine, a
medical device that delivers pressurized air
through a mask to keep the throat muscles
from collapsing, was left behind in Pinedale.
Without much thought, RNs Marcy Beck
and Amy Deeds, and Bill Kluck, Sublette
EMS director, were determined to get it to
Salt Lake as soon as possible knowing the
extreme cost to return it to the family and
the uncertainty if Interstate-80 would remain
open.
With two phone calls to regional col-
leagues, Ron Gaddi of Sweetwater Medics,
and Paul Berry, base director for Air Med
in Rock Springs, an immediate solution
was planned. Kluck drove to Rock Springs
to hand deliver the BiPap to a flight crew
that was coming to Rock Springs. The flight
crew delivered it to the young girl’s mother
at Primary Children Hospital the afternoon
of Dec. 26.
“Our region’s emergency medical teams
and paramedics are devoted to anyone who
needs them at any hour of the day,” Kluck
said, adding it was all about working to-
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Pinedale Medical Clinic’s RNs Amy Deeds, (left) and Marcy Beck (right),
along with Sublette EMS Director Bill Kluck and others, are pleased
with helping a young girl.
gether. “We all understood how important
it was for the young girl to have comfort-
able breathing support with her own BiPap
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AUTHORIZED AGENTS
BIG PINEY
Sublette Communications
231 Front St.
(307) 276-5498
M, W, & F 9:15am to 4pm
LETTER
Dear Editor,
You go to your local health care pro-
vider because they know you!
They know your children. They know
your medical history. You expect them
to know your name without your chart
in front of them. You have a relationship
with them and the people who greet you
when you walk in. The question “who
is your primary health care provider?”
should be easy to answer! You expect to
be referred to a specialist when needed
and that they need to look at your chart
for your history and your name. That
is what is missing and why the clinic
in Marbleton is now ran on a part-time
basis. That is what you need to fix first
as a “RURAL” health care board. You
can’t staff what you have now, so why
build more in an attempt to fix the real
problem. You need to get back to a place
that provides a local hometown feel.
Rural=Personal.
Focus on getting the support of the
county population back and not special-
izing and expanding to increase your
revenue. I for one, liked it when I knew
the doctor’s name that I was going to see,
that they owned a home here, raised their
family here and wanted to be here. They
Courtesy photo struggled to stay here even when the
RHCB tried to drive them out. Which, by
the way, they are still doing for personal
reasons, like they always have.
I remember when we had a thriving
machine. This was a great collaboration be- little green clinic that offered comfort,
tween medical entities to get this child the care, compassion  and security. Provide
BiPap machine she needed.”n that first and the rest will follow. If the
RHCB and commissioners don’t come
together and use what we already have,
a better name for your facility would be
“Spruce Goose” or “Titanic.”
Just pick one.
I had a scathing letter composed to
send for publication. After careful con-
sideration I will only use the word STU-
PID one time! This is in an attempt to be
politically correct.
Commissioners and Rural Health
Care Board, what in God’s name are you
thinking? Smart people on both sides
know in their heart they are right and I
honestly don’t know what is best!
I do know this: We have two spectacu-
lar clinics now; possibly, far more grand
than they needed to be to do the job. The
problem is that we don’t have the popula-
tion or the utilization by the population
to support them. For whatever reason
we can not seem to staff them with great
people wanting to stay or the control-
ling body at the time will let stay. This
has been an ongoing saga for the last 20
years. In Big Piney, if you are fortunate
enough to not need our clinic for a while,
you feel like you are there for the first
time. You have to introduce yourself to
the provider of the day.
That is a problem that a third clinic
will not fix. What will be accomplished
is that the county will end up with, yet,
another vacant medical facility to go
with the old clinics in Marbleton and
Sand Draw. I believe the least “STU-
PID” approach to yet another clinic and
ambulance barn is to buy the old Wyo-
ming Highway Department building and
property in Daniel and renovate a land-
mark building as part of the facility. You
could then provide 24-hour, seven-day
non-emergency public transportation
from Big Piney and Pinedale as a call for
service. That would solve yet another on-
going dilemma – North, South need two.
The least expensive things to relocate
are office and administration facilities.
Move whatever you have from the old
Pinedale clinic building and do what is
needed to add your critical access hos-
pital. I believe that the Sublette County
Commissioners need to step back from
the entertainment and land development
business and focus on the needs of the
PINEDALE taxpayers – like maybe good roads in
Sublette Communications Bargerville. Swallow your pride and do
240 East Pine St. the right thing for the taxpayers. 
P.S. Did you hear the one about the
(307) 367-2475
M-F 8am to 5pm fellow that won a million, bought a mil-
lion dollar house and lost it to taxes?
Ronald Gordon, Big Piney