ALS Service Eliminated in Mass. Agency

[CBEMT]

NORTH BROOKFIELD — Three years of advanced life support ambulance service to this community and neighboring New Braintree have come to an end.

Saying it was too expensive, the North Brookfield EMS service has returned an on-call, basic life support system, selectmen revealed Tuesday.

The advanced life support service, with three full-time paramedics providing 24-7 coverage, cost $540,000 a year.

“To continue at that level, the town would have had to come up with $200,000 to $250,000 a year and in this economy that was simply not an option for us,” said Jason M. Petraitis, chairman of the Board of Selectmen.

http://www.emsresponder.com/article/article.jsp?id=14410&siteSection=1

http://telegram.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100819/NEWS/8190748

[spenac]

Guess a life is not of any real value. The people need to un-elect those in charge and get people that have proper priorities into office. If it were your mother or child that dies because of no ALS care would the $250,000 saved be worth it?

[WolfmanHarris]

It's likely an easy sell as far as the public goes. People call us to go to the hospital and as long as they're getting there they are unlikely to really care what toys we may or may not have to help them. In the eyes of the public EMS is still primarily how they get to the hospital and until the services we provide are relevant outside of such a narrow range don't expect a huge public outcry or even notice.

Let's look at sanitation as a parallel. People may care about recycling, but a cut to a recycling program likely won't catch more than the passing attention of the public as long as their garbage bins and recycling bins are empty after pick-up day. That's the end they expect. The work going on behind the scenes may be important, but to the public it's secondary at best.

[emtannie]

The second weblink provided (http://telegram.com/...19/NEWS/8190748) had a “reader comments” section.

The first comment in this section was from a medic who had worked in this system. That post is as follows and I have highlighted some of the comments I found most interesting:

"As one of the paramedics that worked in your community and also have worked in many other systems, I tried to work with the 'management' of NBEMS to maintain at the ALS level of care. There were many ideas and options that were available to help make it through our six month provisional period with a consult. There were resources that were available to help and these were NOT even investigated by the board of directors. It's a shame what they did to the paramedics that worked there. We were all dedicated and worked 88 hours every third week without getting paid over time or even straight time for our work! We were dedicated to providing the best level of care to the citizens of your community. It's a shame that the management had no intentions of staying at the ALS level. The director said to me on multiple occasions 'if we lose our ALS license, I'll still be the director of a BLS service'. It was quite obvious that this was personal gain for few. I believe this was an attempt for the FD to take over the ambulance as that was mentioned to me many times. You wouldn't hire a brand new mechanic with no experience to run a garage, why would they allow a brand new EMT with no experience run a paramedic level service! Many ideas were thrown out to them and the consultant would have cost 12k and been able to get the service back on track. It's too bad that a company would fold because they were too high and mighty to admit they needed help! Unfortunately the director was concerned about losing his position to a competent paramedic. Don't point the finger at the BOS they were in the dark on what was really going on. Next time you go the dumps ask to know what really happen! Also, the BLS license they have is provisional; meaning any serious deficiencies at inspection time will result in a total loss of the ambulance service."

Another person posted this comment:

"This is a tragic loss for our community. We need to get another ambulance service to come into town that has experience running a business. I will not support the FD running this either; the board had a fire chief on it; and they failed all of us miserably. What a shame; I hope the paramedics that helped my husband with his heart attack can at least collect unemployment!"

It appears that the municipality running this service was clearly not competent, and the reasons for going from ALS back to BLS service were not just financial.

I did a quick Google of the town of North Brookfield and the town of New Braintree, Mass, and found that they have populations of about 4700 and 1000 people. If one were to take the $250,000 and have a “head tax” to cover that dollar amount, every man, woman, and child would pay $44/year to keep ALS services, so the average family of 4 would pay $176/year over and above what they pay now to maintain ALS services.

According to this website: http://lmi2.detma.org/lmi/lmi_town.asp?Area=000512

The average weekly income for North Brookfield is $742, and the workforce is just over 2500 persons. If we extrapolate that to New Braintree, and assume that the same % of the total population is working, more than 50% of the total population has taxable income. Again, assuming an average household of 4 people, 2 are employed, 2 are not. Each employed person would have to pay $88/year to maintain ALS services. Broken down by week, this works out to $1.70/week. If the average weekly income is $742, I suspect that the average employee can afford to pay $1.70/week towards maintaining an ALS service. That doesn't seem like an amount that would over-burden the tax base.

I suspect that there are state and federal funds available to assist with funding emergency services, so the municipality would have to look into that, and that would decrease the amount that would have to be borne by the taxpayer.

Just by quickly reviewing the figures, it appears that the people in charge did not make any serious attempt to save their ALS service, and that politics is playing a bigger role than provision of care.

On top of the loss of the ALS service, it appears that there are other concerns. It is mentioned that audit results have not been satisfactory, and that if further deficiencies are found, that they could lose their ambulance service completely.

This is a very sad situation for this community, and I suspect the majority of the population doesn’t even know how scary it really is. I agree with docharris – people don’t know the ramifications of this, and most won’t care, unless there is a situation where ALS intervention would have made a difference in the life of a resident.

[CBEMT]

When you tell a town of 1000 people that it's going to cost them $540,000 a year to pay for 3 full-time paramedics, it's a no-brainer for people who've never needed the service, but do wonder where their next mortgage payment is coming from. They're never going to think of it in terms of $44 a year.

[emtannie]

When you tell a town of 1000 people that it's going to cost them $540,000 a year to pay for 3 full-time paramedics, it's a no-brainer for people who've never needed the service, but do wonder where their next mortgage payment is coming from. They're never going to think of it in terms of $44 a year.

Which is exactly why you HAVE to present it in terms of $44/year.... of course when you look at $540,000 it looks overwhelming, but it isn't. The people in charge of budgeting never looked at a way to distribute the costs effectively.

[Chief1C]

Just a thought.. maybe a link to the text. Isn't the site already in enough hot water for copy and pasting articles?

[CBEMT]

*shrug* What can I say. The Northeast is in a giant hole of suck economically right now. The well is dry, there's no more money, and the taxpayers don't want to hear it. They figure they didn't have it until 3 years ago, it costs a boatload, we can get away without it.

[emtannie]

Just a thought.. maybe a link to the text. Isn't the site already in enough hot water for copy and pasting articles?

What part are you referring to? Any specific quotes I used were referenced and website links provided.

It is sad that the EMS community has not been able to educate the public on the value of ALS. We can spend a fortune on firehalls and firetrucks, recreational facilties, community centres, and infrastructure, but the public can't see how ALS is a benefit to them.

[CBEMT]

Just a thought.. maybe a link to the text. Isn't the site already in enough hot water for copy and pasting articles?

Are you @#$%ing kidding me?

I linked to TWO different websites providing the same article. I copy/pasted FOUR out of FIFTEEN paragraphs.

I gotta stop there, because I'll get in trouble if I keep typing.

:rolleyes2: :rolleyes2:

Edited August 23, 2010 by CBEMT