Small N.H. Town Debates Need for Full-time EMTs

[CBEMT]

WEARE -- The town's long-standing all-volunteer fire department could soon end.

Town officials plan to ask voters to fund two, full-time per diem emergency medical technicians.

The request comes after fire chiefs from surrounding towns complained their resources are being depleted by constantly responding to medical emergencies in Weare, where no EMT-certified volunteers are available during the day on weekdays.

Neighboring fire departments say they'll charge Weare $1,000 per ambulance call if it doesn't come up with a solution.

Weare's population has grown rapidly in the past decade, with just over 7,700 residents in 2000, according to the census, to an estimated 10,000 people now.

Fire chiefs from New Boston, Goffstown and Dunbarton are expected to attend a meeting this morning with the Weare Board of Fire Wards to discuss a solution to the mutual aid drain, which they say sometimes results in extremely slow response times.

"As firemen... we don't turn our back on anybody, but now it's becoming an impact on every other town," New Boston Fire Chief Dan McDonald said. "We're missing our own calls."

http://www.emsresponder.com/article/article.jsp?id=11598&siteSection=1

Through a friend who works per-diem in that area, this place is the middle of freaking nowhere (as much as anything can be in New England, I suppose). During a storm last winter he drove 2 hours through the snow at the request of his officer- because otherwise, that town and 7 others wouldn't have had a paramedic anywhere near them for the duration.

Edited January 3, 2010 by CBEMT

[Richard B the EMT]

$1,000 a call? Wow. It's only about $900 for an FDNY EMS Paramedic Ambulance response.

[rat115]

Sounds to me like this town is in a situation that many small, rural towns are in where they are unable to get any or an adequit number of volunteer staff during the average work shifts during the week. They just have the neighboring services adding an excellent incentive that might allow their service to go to a partial paid service without as much fight (now) about the overall costs of the implimentation. I hope they're able to pull it off.

[Chief1C]

That bill does seem a little steep.

[spenac]

That bill is to cheap for a rural service. Any ambulance, even non profit must consider the cost of operations for the entire year including potential new ambulances, payroll, taxes,etc and divide that by the avg number of calls. Then you have to factor in not getting paid for most calls, and getting paid less by insurance/medicaid/medicare than billed. So if you factor all that in and it would not be unreasonable to be billing $3500 in a small town.

[Chief1C]

[CBEMT]

Guys, that's not the 3rd party bill for the transport, the way I'm reading this.

That's the bill to the department receiving the mutual aid because they can't get out the door, issued by the department picking up the slack. Services rendered, as they say.