By Patrick Adrian
[email protected]
SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — The Springfield Selectboard approved a plan by the town fire department to expand its ambulance services to include scheduled, non-emergency transports, which the department estimates could generate over $124,000 in net revenue per year.
At the meeting on Monday, Town Manager Tom Yennerell and Fire Chief Russ Thompson presented a proposal to repurpose one ambulance, scheduled for replacement next year, to provide transportation for non-emergency needs to and from medical facilities.
“This is a financial, almost an entrepreneurial endeavor,” Yennerell told the board. “There are constant demands for this type of service. There are private enterprises and municipalities that provide it but they are unable to provide all of it.”
In a written proposal to the board, Thompson explained that hospitals across the region struggle with a shortage of available beds, particularly in high-volume hubs for critical and specialized care like Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, which frequently operates beyond the facility’s bedspace capacity. In cases of patient overflow, hospitals commonly move non-emergency patients to other hospitals with available beds.
But even when another hospital has space, it can take between two to three additional hours to find transportation, according to Thompson.
The department initially plans to hire eight per-diem ambulance attendants, each working two 10-hour shifts per week, to provide total service for 20-hours per day, five days per week. Keeping individual employment under 24 hours per week will keep the workforce below the state threshold that requires the employer to pay into the state retirement system, according to Thompson.
Additionally, the additional ambulance billing work will require moving the assistant town-clerk — who handles billing for the department — from a part-time position in the town office to a full-time position in the fire department, according to Yennerell.
The town will also hire a new assistant-clerk to fill the town’s needs.
“We actually have a couple of candidates, both who’ve been stellar employees,” Yennerell said. “We would like to keep them working in the town hall, so this would be one way to do that.”
Thompson believes the biggest challenges initially will be to acquire the workforce, train them and create a system that will retain them.
“It’s going to be hard work and [there will be] some major challenges,” Thompson said. “These are entry level, per diem positions, so there will be employee turnover.”
The projected cost risk of this endeavor is relatively low. By not selling the ambulance, the department estimates a total revenue loss of $30,000. One needed equipment item, an IV pump, would cost about $2,500 and not have resale value, according to Thompson.
The department also projects to spend $5,600 for employee training, orientation and uniforms.
But Thompson said that there is such a market demand for non-emergency transport, and that a net revenue of $124,000 is a conservative estimate.
Springfield makes 2,400 ambulance runs per year, including 1,700 emergency-medical runs and 1,200 billable ones, according to Thompson.
“This doesn’t include all the non-medical transport requests we have to turn down on a regular basis,” Thompson said.
According to Thompson, hospitals frequently ask Springfield’s emergency-medical staff, when delivering an emergency-transport, if they can move a non-emergency patient.
“We don’t have the staff, because in the time it could take to transport that one patient, we could have two to three emergency calls,” Thompson said.
Thompson told the board that the department hopes to use this revenue to fund the hiring of additional firefighters and staff, as the department’s manpower is currently “strapped.”
“Our call list is down to 14 operational firefighters. We’ve got people doing 40-60 hours of overtime, and some who just want to go home to spend time with their families.”
The selectboard authorized to the plan to take effect in July 2020, once the department acquires its new ambulance.
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