Sheffield — Dewey Hall hosted a panel discussion on Friday, February 21, titled “EMS Crisis in the Berkshires”; however, Action Ambulance CEO Mike Woronka, who was one of the panel participants, said that EMS providers across the Commonwealth are “beyond crisis mode.”
“We are literally putting fingers in dikes, and we don’t have enough fingers anymore to shore up all the leaks,” Woronka said. “People are negatively being impacted across this entire Commonwealth every day. Some patients can’t be moved [via ambulance]. I had a senior executive at a hospital cry on the phone to me and told me that ‘if you can’t find an ambulance to move this patient to a hospital, they’re going to die in my emergency room.’ I have calls from patients’ families at least once a week who tell me, ‘Please take my mom to the hospice because I don’t want them to die in the hospital.’ And my response is ‘I can’t help you.’ And every day we have children passing away in the Commonwealth because we can’t send an ambulance to them.”
This grim reality was the theme of discussion between participants in the panel discussion, which was organized by the Friends of the Bushnell-Sage Library. Joining Woronka in the panel discussion was State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District), Sheffield Police Chief Eric Munson, Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad Board Director James Santos, and Ryan Brown, who is the Lee Regional Task Force representative to Southern Berkshire Emergency Medical Services.
According to panel participants, the problems EMS services face are rooted in inadequate funding; higher costs in resources, including employees and equipment; and problems with staffing, including finding and recruiting trained EMS technicians.
State Rep. Davis currently has five bills concerning emergency medical services in the current legislative session:
- “An Act to declare emergency medical services an essential service“;
- “An Act to establish an emergency medical services treatment-in-place (TIP) pilot program“;
- “An Act establishing an emergency medical services licensure compact“;
- “An Act to require CPR training and promote careers in emergency medical services“; and
- “An Act establishing a special commission on emergency medical services.”
“In 1973, the federal Emergency Medical Systems Act left the states responsible for EMS funding,” Davis during the panel discussion. “At the heart of this is that it is up to municipalities to determine where the funding is, whether it comes from taxes, donations, or the reimbursements they receive.”
Davis said that 13 states and Washington, D.C., have deemed EMS an essential service. “[The states are] prioritizing funding, and they’re enabling and ensuring that there is a comprehensive funding stream and mechanisms that EMS is put on the same level as fire and police,” said Davis. “That is important for many reasons, including recruiting EMS providers and first responders.”
Davis said dedicated and standardized funding mechanisms would help with the financial problems facing EMS services. “We need to make sure that the state steps up and sees that [funding] needs to be dedicated and [EMS services] are not just waiting for insurance reimbursements that aren’t making the cut,” Davis said. “[The state declaring EMS as an essential service] would guarantee long-term financial stability and service reliability.”
Davis said that if her legislation to create a special commission is approved, the commission would be able to look at the challenges facing EMS providers and formulate solutions.
Other participants in the forum said that solutions cannot come soon enough regarding the many problems facing EMS providers. “A dear friend of mine [former Lenox Town Manager Christopher Ketchen] once put it bluntly at a roundtable,” Brown said. “He told people at the roundtable, ‘If you want to take EMS seriously, then why are you not funding it equally to your [Department of Public Works]?’ If your community thinks EMS is important, then is it as important as plowing your roads? Is it as important as mowing your lawns? Because it should be a little more important than that.”
Woronka said that among the many problems EMS providers face is a lack of available ambulances in a community at a given time. “The biggest issue ends up being if there are no ambulances available in a particular community, we in the industry call it ‘community is at level zero,’” Woronka said. “All too often, communities are going to level zero. Some communities are going to level zero to back up a community already at level zero because a call came in. There is [a high] frequency of level zero statuses in all of our communities, not just here in South County, but all across the Commonwealth. The city of Boston can have potentially 20 emergencies pending with no ambulances available.”
“I am at level zero in Pittsfield all the time,” Woronka added.
“Either we need help in Pittsfield or I’m sending my trucks north, south, or east to help other agencies,” Woronka said. “It is a gigantic crisis because, when you call 911, you don’t want your community to be at level zero.”
