Paramedic Shortages......Paying For It?

[MadMod]

We have the problem of a shortage here at the service I work for. Various reasons, but almost all go back to money. Due to the demand for paramedics, the EMS community pushed for and successfully got the programs to reduce the hours of the course. We are being picked off by a city FD/EMS 25 miles up the road that offers more pay and benefits than we can offer. They are taking our best and brightest, leaving on my shift the most experience paramedics having a grand total of 2 years as a paramedic. This includes the fact that they went straight from EMT-Basic to Paramedic without any Basic work experience. It's a slow bleed, yet proving to be a serious one.

We offer to pay for Basics to go to Paramedic school. They apply, we pick and make them sign a contract promising 4 years of return service. This year, one taker. The 4 others we offered it too refused. Keeping their options open for the boys up the road.

Dustdevil wrote:

Get the insurance industry involved. You know why fire protection standards are so high? The insurance companies. You know why insurance rates are astronomical in towns with crap/volunteer fire departments? The insurance companies. If you're a firemonkey, you know what the "Key Rate" is. If we could create such a concept in EMS, it would go a long ways towards upping the educational ante.

This is an excellent point. Fire departments live and die by the ISO board. These are the people that rate the FD and assigns a number. The lower the number, the more people save on their fire insurance. I have long though that if EMS had a similar independent rating board that evaluated the entire system from dispatch to EMS to ER and gave a number that would affect a persons health insurance premiums, you would see peolpe beating down City Halls' door demanding the best people and equipment. At a city budget meeting, or as I like to call it "the Beating and Fleecing", I had a councilman tell me that. He made the statement of "too bad you guy's don't effect my (health) insurance like fire does my home insurance. I'd back you fully then." We asked (begged) for money to replace 2 ambulances with 300,000 miles. Instead, the city opted for a new 400,000 fire pumper because in 2 years the FD was going to try for a 3 (from a 4). This was the pressing issue in public safety. By the way, they were replacing a pumper that was 5 years old, had 5000 miles and 150 hours on the pump (and before anyone says anything, here we had the option of being considered a part of the public safety. Big step up for us from being beaten in the Budget Wars by Animal Control and Meals on Wheels.)

So if we could get more money to offer, the more we could keep.

And don't get me started about the retirement differences.[/font:d0288717d0]