BERNARDSTON — Representatives from Medcare, Bernardston’s current ambulance service provider, are making plans to meet with members of the Bernardston Board of Fire Engineers after learning last week that Bernardston is considering switching to the Northfield EMS ambulance service.
“We are still trying to find out exactly what’s going on,” said Danielle West, Operations Manager and Communications Supervisor for Medcare’s Greenfield division. “We have no complaints from Bernardston about service. This is news to us. … We hope to remain their (Bernardston’s) primary 911 provider.”
Medcare has provided EMS ambulance service to Bernardston for over 20 years, West said. Until 2010, it was the primary provider of ambulance services to Northfield too.
Northfield’s own ambulance services have existed in various capacities since the 1980s, said Northfield EMS Chief Mark Fortier, but only as a secondary “backup” to some other company’s service. By 2010, Northfield EMS had built up enough of a paramedic service that it could reliably serve Northfield as the town’s primary ambulance service.
Northfield EMS and Medcare both provide their services at no cost to the towns they serve. They are paid by patients’ insurance plans. For Northfield EMS, this means that a larger coverage area would generate more revenue, which Fortier says would enable him to switch from a volunteer staff that works eight hours a day to a full-time staff with 24-hour service. Fortier says that ultimately this would be good for Northfield because it would give the town a more reliable ambulance service.
“Unfortunately, people get sick 24 hours a day, not eight hours a day,” Fortier said. “The volunteers do a fantastic job, but people have jobs, they have families, they have work, and you can’t always get a crew out 100 percent of the time.”
Fortier has been having conversations with the Bernardston Board of Fire Engineers about the possibility of Northfield EMS becoming Bernardston’s primary ambulance service since 2010, but this is the first time that discussions have come close to any sort of agreement, Fortier said.
“He (Fortier) has brought the pitch up every year since he’s been in service,” said Bernardston Fire Chief Peter Shedd.
Northfield EMS is currently Bernardston’s secondary ambulance provider. If Medcare is unable to send an ambulance to Bernardston quickly enough, Northfield EMS takes the call. That arrangement has worked well in the past, but in recent years Northfield EMS’ call volume from Bernardston has increased, Shedd said. That trend might not be out of the ordinary, he added. Over the past 10 years, ambulance services all over the county have begun to regionalize so that fewer organizations are serving larger areas. Most recently, the towns of Deerfield, Sunderland and Whately merged their own ambulance services into a regional service that will soon be based in South Deerfield. The goal of that merger was to improve finances and provide more consistent coverage
“If you look at Franklin County, regionalized services are the norm,” Fortier said. “In order for it to be financially viable, you have to cover enough geographic area.”
If Northfield EMS is to expand to cover Bernardston, the Bernardston Board of Fire Engineers must vote to enter into a contract with Northfield EMS. The two towns’ Selectboards would likely have to come to some agreement as well, Fortier said.
“At the very least we owe it to them to hear their pitch and hear their story and see if it’s worth it or not,” Shedd said.
He said that Bernardston has had a good working relationship with Northfield EMS, and that it would be good for Bernardston to support a small local organization rather than the larger Medcare. The Board of Engineers’ only reservation is whether Northfield EMS can expand its staff to reliably serve Bernardston.
“It looks like he (Fortier) can, on paper,” Shedd said.
Fortier said: “I’m ready to go today. It’s a matter of everybody else getting on board.”