Rockport has taken its first steps toward launching a municipal ambulance service to replace the private contractor that currently plays that role in the town.
While the Saco-based North East Mobile Health has provided the town’s rescue service since 2013, the town has now started sending trained firefighters out on first response calls with the contractor, and last month voters agreed to start a new independent local EMS service to replace it. The town now expects to launch its ambulance and fire service around January.
The split between North East and Rockport highlights a growing tension in Maine communities. While contractors can often deliver services more affordably at a regional scale in rural parts of the state, there’s been a recent trend of some communities reducing their dependence on private companies because they prefer the local control and other benefits that may come from doing it on their own.
“We will have 100 percent control over the personnel that we hire: their training, their education, their professionalism, the equipment that we have, the response times, when and when not to call mutual aid, we’ll have 100 percent control over all of that. When you have a contracted company, you’re limited on having control on that,” said Rockport fire chief Jason Peasley.
At least one other midcoast town, Camden, has implemented its own first responder program and is training firefighters in emergency medical services, with a goal of severing ties with North East in a couple years.
Other communities around Maine have also been starting their own independent transporting medical services to compete with contractors in recent years, including Waterville and Winslow which have ended their ties with Delta Ambulance, and towns in southern Aroostook County which formed their own service after growing frustrated with the fees charged by the town of Houlton.
Bringing EMS services in-house will cost Rockport taxpayers more money than if they’d stayed with North East.
Last month, voters approved spending $1.2 million to start the service, which will require hiring at least six new workers.
The town also approved the purchase of an ambulance last December, at a cost of more than $450,000, and it’s building a new fire station in West Rockport that’s costing taxpayers $2.7 million — after another $1 million was provided by the Lesher Family Foundation — according to The Courier-Gazette. The new station will accommodate the department’s expanded mission and is expected to open in the fall.
If Rockport was staying with North East, its annual fee would be $253,295 under a new contract, up more than $100,000 from the annual fee in the previous contract, according to the Courier-Gazette.
While the cost increase will be greater with the creation of the local ambulance service, town officials argue that the investment will result in better, more consistent care for people in town. Peasley said he has not always been impressed with the response times of North East, which also serves Hope and Lincolnville, in addition to Camden.
“We have had numerous, numerous occasions where patients are having to wait for an ambulance that’s en route to the hospital with a different patient, to drop that patient off, and then respond. It happens over and over again, and it’s just not something that is good patient care,” he said.
North East officials have pushed back on those complaints. Rick Petrie, its chief operating officer, said the company has met all of its town-set response requirements and never had a glaring issue.
“We’ve never fallen below the response guides, and we’ve worked very hard to make sure that we’ve provided quality emergency medical response to the towns,” Petrie said.
On a larger level, North East officials said that it can be hard for rural communities to go it alone when it comes to providing emergency rescue service.
Across the state, EMS services tend to be short-staffed, are reimbursed by insurance providers at inadequate rates, and are having to pay growing numbers of workers after long relying on volunteers.
Given all those struggles, Petrie said, it can be easier for a contractor that works at a regional scale — drawing reimbursement from patients in several communities as opposed to just one — to make enough income to keep operating.
“You really need to look at a system that encourages and puts a regionalization in place, so that you can get the most effective, most efficient utilization of resources. Rockport’s decision to go out on their own puts that in jeopardy,” Petrie said. “The reality is that a decision like this has a significant impact on the EMS system as a whole, on the workforce as a whole, and has potential to have a dramatic effect on the response system overall.”
