Berkshire County — The Berkshire Food Co-op in Great Barrington has donated $1,402 to the Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad Inc. The funds were raised by the Co-op’s “Nickel Back Thursday” program, with the Co-op donating five percent of its sales from a Thursday to a local nonprofit. The Co-op officially presented the organization funds at an event on Friday, March 29.
“The Co-op is a great place and has always been very community-minded,” Berkshire Ambulance Squad President Jim Santos said. “They always give back to the community and we appreciate it.”
The event also served as a meet and greet for members of the ambulance service and Co-op customers. “We spent the day inside and outside the [Co-op] meeting and talking with customers,” Berkshire Ambulance Squad Board of Directors member John Halbreich told The Berkshire Edge. “We also had an ambulance parked in front of the Co-op for the day. It was very successful for us being able to tell people more about the ambulance service and the advanced life support services that our organization offers.”
“When we were speaking to people, we had a chance to clear up misconceptions about our organization,” Santos said. “The people that we spoke to had this common misconception that we were an all-volunteer organization.”
The organization was formed in 1968 and serves six towns: Alford, Egremont, Great Barrington, Monterey, Mount Washington, and Sheffield. In 2014, members of Southern Berkshire Ambulance voted to become a nonprofit organization and an all-paid workforce service. According to Southern Berkshire Ambulance Chief Kevin Wall, the organization currently employs 12 EMTs, 10 paramedics, three advanced EMTs, and two administrative staff members.
“For the first years of our existence, towns received our services for free, but now we are a fully staffed organization that operates 24/7,” Santos said. “The people we spoke to also had a misconception that we were subsidized through tax money through the towns we serve.”
Santos explained that the organization does not automatically receive money from a town’s taxes. Instead, the organization makes funding requests to each of the municipal towns that it serves. The requests are typically part of a warrant article in each annual town meeting.
This year, the organization has had to substantially increase its funding requests from fiscal 2024 to continue operating in fiscal 2025:
Town funding requests for Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad Inc.:
In a press release shared with The Berkshire Edge, co-written by Berkshire Ambulance Squad Board of Directors member John Halbreich and Co-op Marketing Manager Devorah Sawyer, the two wrote:
Southern Berkshire Ambulance Service is currently underfunded by the towns, the state, and/or insurance reimbursements, and is in jeopardy of closing, following the fate of Adams’ Ambulance service which closed service at the end of 2023. Every contribution helps Southern Berkshire Ambulance Service continue to service our South County residents, as the ambulance service has done for over 50 years.
When asked for elaboration, Halbreich said that there are multiple reasons why emergency medical services in the Commonwealth are always on the financial edge. “One thing that’s important to understand is that, in the state of Massachusetts, emergency medical services are not considered an essential service such as police and fire departments,” Halbreich said. “We can’t seek state grants because that’s not available to us.”
“We have also had to deal with a declining call volume,” Wall said. “If we have fewer calls, we take in less revenue. Last year we had 400 fewer calls than the previous year. Reimbursements went down, and salaries and employee insurance costs have gone up. So, that’s a problem.” (The typical call volume for the organization—not including last year—is 3,000 calls per year.)
“Adding to all of this, the biggest part of how we are funded is money we collect through insurance companies,” Santos said. “We lose money pretty much on every call we go on because [residents with] Medicare and Medicaid are probably up to 65 percent of our calls. Through Medicare and Medicaid, we only receive 35 percent of what we charge, if we are lucky. We lose money on all of those calls, and you just can’t sustain an organization with that sort of funding model.”
Santos said that representatives from the organization are discussing with representatives from its service towns, along with state representatives, about adopting a different funding model. “We’re in the early stages of having meetings, and it’s going to take quite a bit of time to come up with something that everybody’s happy with,” Santos said. “We’re not anywhere near saying what this model could be yet, and I have no specifics on how that’s going to progress.”
In the meantime, despite the organization’s funding situation, Santos and Halbreich said that the organization will continue to provide its emergency services to the towns that it serves. “Nobody can survive without an ambulance service,” Santos said. “They can’t survive without a police department, a fire department, and an EMS service.”
“I want people to know that, when there is an emergency, when they dial 911, an ambulance is going to come to their house,” Halbreich added. “We provide that service, and we will continue to. I think that there are people in these towns who all support us.”
Click here to donate to the Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad Inc.
Correction: An earlier version of this story was miscaptioned.
