Tiger Team Recommendations: Evaluate EMT Outsourcing Synergies with Valley Hospital
We believe there may be synergies and economies of scale to be obtained by working with Valley Hospital to outsource Village EMT Services to Valley Hospital. Valley has obvious expertise in provision of EMT services and currently serves over 32 communities in and around Bergen County, with professional Advanced Life Service (ALS) technicians, as opposed to the Fire Department’s 18 Basic Life Service (BLS) technicians. The committee questions the need to have both of these heavily redundant service providers within half a mile of each other in Ridgewood. A possible outsourcing of Emergency Medical Services to Valley would reduce direct service demands on the police and fire departments, reduce training/certification costs, reduce ambulance costs/maintenance for the Village and potentially improve service levels.
In the most recent audit of the Fire Department, 744 “Rescue/EMS” response calls were documented in the previous year. This was the single highest response category and represented 33% of all call responses by the Fire Department. The second highest response category was false alarms (526) at 23% of all call responses.
Actual fire calls only represented 3% of all call responses. These percentages remain relatively constant from year to year. In the most recent Police Department audit, over 1,200 “Medical Assist/Personal Injury” calls by Police staff were also documented. If EMS call responsibility could be eliminated from the Fire Department and provided by Valley Hospital, opportunities may exist to improve Fire Department efficiency, focus on core Fire control and prevention competencies and reduce training/compliance requirements & costs, salary, overtime and long-term pension liabilities. Similar efficiencies, although to a much smaller degree, may also
be possible within the Police Department.
While we believe that this is an intriguing concept for the Village and Valley Hospital to explore, it will require more extensive due diligence on the part of Valley Hospital, the Village Council and the FOB to quantify the full financial implications to the Village and ensure a net saving, without a sacrifice in this essential service. It is important to note that outsourcing this service to a potentially more efficient provider, would not necessarily lead to the immediate elimination of personnel in the Fire Department. Rather, the committee’s view is that this may allow staffing/scheduling efficiencies, based on a significant reduction of the hourly demands on Fire
employees (including certification training), and a focus on each group’s core competencies.
Some questions for consideration include:
• What are the annual costs for training, certification & compliance of Fire & Police EMT?
• Would outsourcing this service allow staffing flexibility, particularly in Fire?
• Would a 30% reduction of call load in Fire facilitate opportunities to change current 24-hour shifts to
8-hour or 12-hour shifts, and improve operational efficiency of Fire Department?
• Would this create an opportunity to consolidate two current firehouses?
• What would are long-term impacts on benefit and pension obligations in Fire?
• What are the logistics involved of having Valley Hospital’s EMT staff be a “first responder”?
• Are there insurance-related benefits for the Village?
I’m suprised that the RFD hasn’t already written a rebuttal to the Finance team report. It basically is making a new fire department.
They don’t want to piss of their friend the Mayor
well how do other big town’s with out a full paid fire dept do it.
How many paid firefighters do we have in the village? I know that most are certified EMTs and they respond quickly to emergencies.
40 total I think
And how many fires do they respond to in a year? Could 30 firefighters do the job?
#6 no the village does not have a deep enough voluteer staff to fill those slots. A paid 24/7 fire dept. is what the taxpayers of the town want and pay for through higher taxes. Just think back to the furuor that was created when a previous councilman brought up the idea of closing the west side firehouse. Councilman Richie was in that council I think councilman Grubb was the author of that debacle.
Read your tax bill carefully. The ‘municipal’ portion of the taxes (fire, police, streets, sanitation) isn’t the reason your taxes go sky high. Its the schools portion (75%). Having paid firefighters who respond immediately upon receiving the call is the reason your homeowner’s insurance rates are cheaper than towns where you have to wait for a volunteer to drive to the station, grab the engine THEN respond to the fire. Also, Ridgewood could never fully staff a fire dept with volunteers. They can’t even do that with the ambulance. Want to save money on taxes? Pay attention to the schools portion, with generous salaries and benefits. Maybe increase class size to 30 kids and you’ll save a bundle. When I attended the schools here in the 1970’s we did just fine with large classes.
There’s that Valley Hospital connection again.
There seems to be a nexus between valley’s intrest in bls ambulance service and billing insurance companies for ambulance rides. The practice has started in the past decade even volunteer amb corps are doing it. Now valley becomes interested in ambulancing. Can you say CASH COW !