The west end of Columbus County will soon be home to a new team of paramedics, thanks to state funding for rural health care.
The Columbus County Countywide Mobile Integrated Health/Community Paramedic Response Unit will operate 24 hours a day to respond to emergency behavioral health calls across the county, from mental health crises to overdoses.
The unit will also fill an emergency care gap in the western part of the county, said Brandy Nance, the county’s deputy emergency services director.
“We’re not just looking at providing paramedic coverage for behavioral health and overdose,” she said. “We’re also looking at someone who is elderly, who’s maybe a frequent user of the emergency department, or maybe it’s an elderly person that has congestive heart failure and needs someone to check on them.”
Columbus County has seen a 12% increase in calls for emergency medical services in the last decade, according to Nance. She attributed some of the increase to the county’s lack of public transportation and growing elderly population.
An average of 73 households in each of the county’s census tracts don’t have access to a vehicle, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Access to ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft is limited, Nance said. A transportation system provides one-way rides for $10 per person for trips outside of Whiteville and the town of Brunswick.
More than 20% of the county’s population is over the age of 65, census data shows.
“A lot of those people don’t drive, or they don’t have anyone that could take them to the doctor,” Nance said. “So they have to call an ambulance.”
Last year, 2.3% of emergency medical services calls in Columbus County were related to behavioral health, Nance said. Many of them, she added, involved drug overdoses. The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 32 out of every 100,000 Columbus County residents died of an overdose last year. That’s more than 1.5 times higher than the state average.
Four paramedics hired by the county—three full time and one part time—will likely make up the new unit, Nance said. The team will get a quick response vehicle outfitted with medical and rescue equipment, bringing the county’s total to three. The others are based in the southern and eastern ends of the county.
Paramedics will follow up after calls to ensure those involved have a care plan and are connected with other providers and resources, according to Nance. The goal, she said, it to keep people out of the emergency room.
Columbus County Emergency Services got $419,625 for the next year from the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services to establish the new unit. It was among 39 county emergency agencies to receive a portion of $10 million in grants from the department.
The funding came from the department’s Rural Health Transformation Program, which aims to improve access to health care for the state’s nearly 3 million rural residents. North Carolina received $213 million from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services as part of a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last year.
The money “recognizes EMS as an essential component of North Carolina’s health care workforce and a vital partner in expanding access to behavioral health care and substance use disorder treatment,” Hannah Jones, a spokesperson for the state health and human services department, said in a written statement. “This funding represents an important step toward ensuring that rural residents have greater access to the services and support they need to achieve long-term health and recovery.”
Columbus County is the third-largest county by land area in North Carolina. It has one hospital to serve its 50,000 residents. The entire county is considered a mental health professional shortage area by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.
Jones said the emergency medical services funding works in tandem with other state grants to improve Trillium Health Resources and other mobile crisis teams working across the state. Trillium Health Resources was among the organizations that sent a letter of support as part of Columbus County’s grant application for the new paramedic unit.
Nance said the goal is for the unit to be a five-year program, with the county reapplying for funding annually.
The county and the state Department of Health and Human Services are still writing the contract for the grant, Nance said. Once completed, the Columbus County Board of Commissioners will need to approve it. She doesn’t expect any hiccups.