Maryland County to Bolster Ambulance Service
Queen Anne's County commissioners said they will begin buying ambulances and hiring more drivers and emergency medical technicians.
Hoping to cut the wait time for sick and injured residents needing transportation to the hospital, Queen Anne's County commissioners said they will begin buying ambulances and hiring more drivers and emergency medical technicians.
Following a presentation from emergency officials, the Board of County Commissioners agreed Tuesday to include money in next year's budget to back up volunteers where the number of medical calls is greatest - Kent Island.
"It's something we need to do," said Kent Island Volunteer Fire Department Chief Tracy Schulz. The volunteers just haven't had the time to provide the service we need with all the growth we've had."
The county averages 6,000 medical calls a year, but because of high training requirements and limited numbers of recruits, volunteer ambulance and paramedic service in Queen Anne's County is regularly short-staffed.
"They have done a phenomenal job," Emergency Services Director John Chew Jr. said. "But the problem is, it's a few people, one or two, who are doing most of the runs."
Getting a paramedic to the door isn't the problem. Paid county staff driving in pick-up trucks get to a person's house within eight minutes of a 911 call 90 percent of the time, Mr. Chew said.
But the trucks are unable to carry patients, so paramedics wait an average of 23.8 minutes for a volunteer ambulance to arrive to take them to the nearest hospital in Annapolis or Easton, another 20- to 25-minute trip.
"If you were to ask me as a consultant, I'd tell you that's an unacceptable standard in any community in the U.S.," Mr. Chew said.
In neighboring Talbot and Caroline counties, which started running paid ambulances in 1994 and 1997, it takes between 7.4 to 11 minutes for a two-man ambulance to show up and whisk a patient to the nearest emergency room. Queen Anne's County officials believe they will be able to do the same within eight minutes on most calls.
The four proposed paid ambulances would still back up county volunteer trucks first. A test program started in 2005 in Queenstown has produced favorable results, emergency officials said.
"We're a volunteer system supported by the paid," Mr. Chew said. "Right now, we're about 50-50."
But it will cost. A new ambulance runs about $125,000, and the county needs to hire two drivers for each new vehicle. Drivers' salaries would be paid for by billing insurance companies of patients, a practice started this year, but the ambulance will have to be paid for by taxes.
Commissioners agreed to purchase one ambulance a year through 2009, with the first being placed in Kent Island, where more than 40 percent of current paramedic calls originate.
But Commissioner Richard Smith, R-Centreville, worried that committing to the ambulances would lead to requests for extras like new stations, gear and other expenses.
"My question is, how much are we going to subsidize you?' he asked.
The paid units would still give way to volunteers when possible. However, officials say privately that they believe the number of volunteers running medical calls is likely to go down when paid ambulance services starts.
In addition to staffing, another potential problem may be the volunteer ambulances, some of which date back to 1991 and have logged thousands of trips to Easton Memorial or Anne Arundel Medical Center.
"It's a great backup source for a primary unit, but they are old," said Scott Haas, chief of the county's EMS division.
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