Fire departments depend on their Records Management Systems (RMS) and electronic Patient Care Reporting (ePCR) platforms for everything from incident documentation to reporting, QA/QI, and revenue recovery. But what happens when the person managing that system leaves?
Whether it’s due to retirement, promotion, burnout, or reassignment, the loss of your system administrator can send a ripple effect through your entire department. Reports don’t run. Data quality suffers. Workflows break. Suddenly, that sophisticated platform you invested in feels like a liability.
You’re not alone. Across the country, departments are experiencing high turnover in critical tech support roles. Here’s what causes the disruption—and how to ensure your agency is never caught off guard.
Losing a Knowledge Anchor: Why Most Departments Struggle Without a Backup
Your RMS admin often becomes the single source of truth for everything from system configuration to password resets. Over time, they build custom reports, optimize workflows, and learn how to speak the language of your vendor. But what they rarely do is document any of it.
When that person walks away—voluntarily or not—what’s left behind is usually a fragile system held together by scattered notes, outdated cheat sheets, or trial-and-error knowledge. And when something goes wrong, no one knows how to fix it.
Most departments don’t have a succession plan for RMS or ePCR roles. Instead, someone from operations or IT is handed the keys and expected to “figure it out.” That may work for a while, but it rarely delivers the consistency or continuity that mission-critical software requires.
High Turnover Is the Norm—Not the Exception
The national average tenure for RMS administrators in fire departments is under two years. That means even if your current admin is solid, chances are they won’t be in that seat long-term.
We’ve worked with departments where the system changed hands three or more times in a five-year window. Every time, the new admin had to relearn the system from scratch. In many cases, the department lost critical configurations, workflows, and integrations because no one knew how or why they were set up.
That kind of turnover isn’t just inefficient—it’s expensive. Lost productivity, retraining costs, increased support tickets, and vendor consulting fees quickly eat into your budget. And the worst part? The more you lose, the less confident your team becomes in the system.
Your Users Feel It First
When there’s no one actively managing the system, users are the first to suffer. They experience:
- Slow or broken workflows
- Incorrect or missing data
- Unreliable reports
- Lack of training or support
- Growing frustration with the platform
Eventually, you start hearing things like “This system just doesn’t work for us” or “We should go back to paper.” In reality, the system may be fine—but it’s being poorly managed or misconfigured due to the staffing gap.
Your frontline users need stability. If they don’t trust the system, they’ll stop using it properly, and your data quality and compliance will decline.
The Real Cost of an Unfilled Admin Role
Let’s talk dollars. Hiring a full-time, in-house RMS administrator can cost your department upwards of $120,000 annually when you include salary, benefits, training, and turnover. Even when you fill the role, there’s no guarantee that person will stay.
And what happens when that admin leaves during a critical update, integration rollout, or after your agency has gone live with a new platform? You’re left scrambling for vendor support, often at a premium hourly rate—and often without the historical knowledge to explain what broke.
You may even start relying on vendors for day-to-day administrative tasks, which they’re more than happy to charge you for. The irony? You’re now spending more on patchwork fixes than you would on consistent, expert support.
The Smart Alternative: Fractional System Administration
OG Advisors offers a better path—one built for continuity, consistency, and confidence.
We provide fractional Fire RMS and ePCR administration that scales with your agency. Whether you need light-touch support or full-scale configuration management, we give you access to real experts who’ve worked inside the systems you’re using today—ImageTrend, ESO, First Due, FireWorks, and others.
With OG Advisors, you get:
- Continuous system support without full-time staffing costs
- Configuration and optimization aligned to your agency’s operations
- Report building, QA/QI workflow development, and user training
- Support that stays consistent even if your personnel change
Our advisors have decades of experience and actively manage systems for agencies across the country. They don’t just “figure it out”—they bring proven best practices and a stable hand so your system never becomes a burden again.
Don’t Wait Until You’re Scrambling
If you’re anticipating a retirement, promotion, or vacancy in your RMS or ePCR admin role—or if you’ve already lost someone—you don’t need to start over.
At OG Advisors, we’re here to help you keep your systems running smoothly, your users supported, and your leadership confident in the data you rely on. We’ve helped hundreds of departments bridge the gap, and we can do the same for yours.
Fill out the form below to talk to our team. We’ll help you assess where you are, where you’re vulnerable, and how to protect your agency from costly software chaos.
