ADAMS, Mass. - Adams Ambulance Service, Inc. said they can’t keep operating much longer with their current level of staffing and funding.
The private ambulance company serves the towns of Adams, Cheshire, Savoy and Hawley.
What You Need To Know
- Adams Ambulance Service Inc. will be meeting with the town of Adams next week to discuss plans of action for the ambulance company which is operating at a loss
- The nonprofit, private organization is not municipally funded and operates as fee-for-service and gets reimbursed through health insurance, patient billing and donations
- Adams Ambulance serves Adams, Cheshire, Savoy and Hawley; more than 12,000 people
- According to the 2023 National Survey of EMS Economic and Operational Models, the EMS workforce is seeing an average increase in overall costs of 8% between 2019 and 2022, as well as an average 13% decrease in paramedic/EMT positions
“I've been a paramedic in any EMT for 25 years now," general manager Sean Sanderson said. "You know, it's a very different world than when I started.”
Sanderson said as medicine and medical technology has evolved exponentially over the years, so have expenses. Adams Ambulance is a non-profit organization which is not municipally funded and operates as fee-for-service; they get reimbursed through health insurance and patient billing.
“As expenses have increased, that's made it so that we can't survive on just those revenues anymore," Sanderson said. "We only get about a quarter of what we bill in actual returns; which is a difficult business model to do. And we respond to calls no matter what.”
According to Sanderson, they have 25 employees who respond to an average of 2,300 requests for service a year. Last year they had about 1,800 billable calls totaling roughly $4 million and only received about $1.2 million in payments. The general manager said there’s a large gap between reimbursements and costs.
“The rates are set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services," Sanderson said. "They're the ones who set the Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates. Insurance companies base their reimbursement rates on those, and those haven't increased in kind with inflation and cost.”
“It's a big crunch right now and it's really hurting us bad,” said board of directors president Richard Kleiner.
Kleiner said the company gets subsidized from Hawley as of last year and is now looking for help from the other municipalities they serve.
“We're going to be going to the towns and asking for their assistance," Kleiner said. "It's in a talking stage right now. So, hopefully that they can come up with some help for us some way.”
“It's a challenging situation we're in," Sanderson said. "Both as a region and as a nation with the EMS staffing and EMS funding.”