City of Gulf Breeze
Implementation Plans
FY 2024-2025 Plan
The City of Gulf Breeze is a municipality that has been approved for inclusion in the opioid settlement between the State of Florida and certain entities with the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain. The City of Gulf Breeze proposes to expend the FY 2024 – 2025 funds on documentation software and responder education for the City’s municipal volunteer fire department. These expenditures are to upgrade the department’s incident reporting system, expand and maintain the department’s online medical response training program and send members of the department to medical training that includes the pre-hospital treatment of patients suffering from opioid overdose and other associated conditions. The City’s primary use of the funds is to upgrade and implement the department’s incident reporting software. The department currently uses Emergency Reporting for managing incident information.
In FY 2024 – 2025 the department is transitioning to ESO. This new software will have the ability to better track incidents involving drug overdose and related medical conditions. These statistics are valuable for the tracking of these types of incidents in relation to the effectiveness of programs. The city feels that this use is consistent with Schedule B, to prevent overdose deaths and other harms. Gulf Breeze intends to expand, improve, or develop data tracking software and applications for overdoses/naloxone revivals. The cost of the software in FY 24 – 25 is approximately $6,000.
The city’s second priority use of the funds is to fund on going responder training. Vector Solutions, the fire department’s continuing education software has educational classes on treatment of patients suffering from opioid overdose and other conditions related to opioid and substance addiction as well as safely and effectively managing patients suffering from mental health conditions. This includes classes on responder safety and legal protections, such as Good Samaritan laws and how they are applied to responders with a duty to act. In these types of calls, of the police department is the first agency to arrive and initiate patient contact and start care. As an added benefit, the city’s firefighters provide in service training to the city’s police department these related topics, so the program will indirectly benefit the city’s police force as well. Therefore, the city proposes to dedicate these funds to continue the use of this training program and expand the access to more members of the department.
The City of Gulf Breeze third priority proposes to fund the cost of tuition for three (3) members of the fire department to attend Emergency Medical Technician (“EMT”). Currently, members of the fire department are required to obtain the level of Emergency Medical Responder (“EMR”). EMR is an approximately 40-hour class taught in-house at the fire department by department EMT’s. Given the need to cover so many topics in a 40-hour class, the topics of substance use disorder may rate a five-minute discussion. Opioids, due to the awareness raised by the recent opioid crisis, will receive more dedicated class time, and mental health concerns often associated with these disorders are covered briefly without much depth. In short, the EMR is prepared to respond to these types of incidents but still has a lot to learn. EMT, in contrast is a six (6) month program taught at a program run through the Florida Department of Education. The over 200 hours of class time allow for a more thoroughly discuss, explain and learn strategies to treat medical emergencies in these patients. The city wants to educate first responders regarding the existence and operation of immunity and Good Samaritan laws. The cost of tuition, uniforms and textbooks is $2,000 per student, so a total of ˚$6,000.
The City of Gulf Breeze has been notified that the City’s portion of the settlement totals $250,680.48 over an 18-year disbursement. This is a total of $13,962.69 per year. The City of Gulf Breeze respectfully requests that the above listed projects be funded for a total of $13,600. Thank you for your consideration.