Delaware County Emergency Medical Services seeks additional funding

DUSTIN ENSINGER

Staff Writer

After putting a few major pur­chases on hold in recent years, the Delaware County Emer­gency Med­ical Ser­vices (DCEMS) is hop­ing to play catch up in 2013.

DCEMS is hop­ing to pur­chase five new vehi­cles, 11 car­diac mon­i­tor and five auto­matic exter­nal defib­ril­la­tors in the com­ing year, chief Rob Farmer said at bud­get hear­ings Tuesday.

The costs of those pur­chases, along with ris­ing per­son­nel costs due to a nego­ti­ated union con­tract, led Farmer to ask the Delaware County com­mis­sion­ers for a 16.6 per­cent increase in his 2013 budget.

Farmer is ask­ing that his depart­ment receive $11.5 mil­lion, up from the $9.9 mil­lion DCEMS was appro­pri­ated in 2012.

“The biggest thing is the cap­i­tal expen­di­tures,” Farmer said of the requested increase in funding.

The car­diac mon­i­tors are at the end of their lifes­pan, accord­ing to Farmer. The aver­age life expectancy for that equip­ment is seven to 10 years, and DCEMS has some that are much older than that, and in the next two years, it will no longer be pos­si­ble to pur­chase new replace­ments parts.

“This is not the first time that I have asked for them,” he said. “How­ever, it has never got­ten to this point.”

Accord­ing to Farmer, the devices are key to early detec­tion of a heart attack.

“This device is a key ele­ment in that,” he said.

To replace each of the devices would cost between $260,000 and $320,000, accord­ing to Farmer, who said that he has looked into leas­ing the equip­ment or pur­chas­ing them over a longer period of time.

But after learn­ing of their impor­tance in the field, com­mis­sioner Ken O’Brien said that he would sup­port pur­chas­ing them all at once.

“It seems like an appro­pri­ate expense,” he said.

Com­mis­sioner Den­nis Sta­ple­ton asked Farmer if he had looked at the pos­si­bil­ity of boost­ing the department’s rev­enue by tran­si­tion­ing to a “soft billing” model. Sta­ple­ton said that he was not advo­cat­ing for such a model, but was sim­ply inter­ested on the eco­nomic impact it would have.

Accord­ing to Farmer, a billing com­pany ran the num­bers a cou­ple of years ago and found that it would gen­er­ate mil­lions of dol­lars, although he was unsure of the exact dol­lar figure.

How­ever, he said he would be hes­i­tant to move in that direc­tion with­out other trans­port agen­cies in the county fol­low­ing suit.

“There is a belief that if the county were to start billing, the other trans­port agen­cies in the county would use that against us,” Farmer said.

Delaware County Admin­is­tra­tor Tim Hans­ley said that a “soft billing” model would not impact the county’s tax­pay­ers. Those with health insur­ance would be sent a bill to be for­warded to their insur­ance com­pany, which would cover the costs. Unin­sured res­i­dents would also be sent a bill, but the county would not recoup any money.

“If the insur­ance com­pany doesn’t pay it, we don’t col­lect it,” Hans­ley said.

The DCEMS’ bud­get request includes $6.7 mil­lion in salary, includ­ing an esti­mated $2.5 mil­lion in over­time costs; $2.8 mil­lion in ben­e­fits; more than $179,000 in mate­ri­als and sup­plies; and $1.1 mil­lion in ser­vices and charges.

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.