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Green River residents, commissioners push short-term fixes as rural clinic and EMS strain under staffing gaps
Summary
Residents and county commissioners described long ambulance waits and inadequate clinic capacity in Green River and discussed short-term retention stipends using TRT money and a possible county-city-district funding agreement while urging state-level rural health investments.
A town-hall-style meeting in Green River brought residents together with Emery County commissioners and state lawmakers on concerns about access to health care and emergency medical services. A resident opened the discussion saying: “We wait hours for an ambulance. We have people in the back of pickup trucks at the clinic,” prompting a sustained exchange about staffing and funding.
Representative Logan Monson, vice chair of the state House Health and Human Services Committee, told attendees the state expects to receive federal rural-health transformation funds that could total about $160 million a year over five years and said the money is intended to help rural communities expand services, though it will not fully substitute for local funding needs.
County officials described recent changes at the Green River clinic and efforts the commission took to exempt the facility from property taxes to reduce operating costs. Commissioners also reviewed EMS governance: Emery County created a special service district for EMS in 2020 and the district board was reorganized to include representatives from each town and the sheriff to improve local oversight.
As an immediate measure, commissioners and travel-board members discussed deploying roughly $25,000 in TRT (transient-room-tax) mitigation funds to provide weekend retention stipends for Green River EMS crews — a proposal the county estimated would amount to about $500 per weekend (roughly $25,000 a year) to incentivize local coverage. Officials described prior stipend arrangements (about $60 per shift for responders who travel into Green River, with a margin of error acknowledged by the speaker) and noted the district raised on-call pay from $1 to $4 per hour to help staffing.
Commissioners emphasized these are stopgap measures: pay rates remain low (a cited range was about $12–$14 an hour for drivers, $17 for EMTs and a little over $20 for advanced EMTs) and county leaders said longer-term solutions will require coordination among the city, the district and the county and may include seeking state-supported rural-health funding or a multi-year funding agreement.
The meeting closed with officials asking residents to participate in budget hearings and to contact staff and board members — including named local contacts such as Guy Webster for district concerns — to work on local retention and clinic-support plans.
