MONTAGUE — Town officials are “cautiously optimistic” about the transition from MedCare Emergency Health to American Medical Response (AMR) ambulance services, effective Dec. 16. AMR announced its purchase of the local ambulance service earlier this month.
Communications Advisor for Medavie Health Services, Tim Winchester, confirmed that Medavie, which owned MedCare, successfully signed an asset purchase agreement with AMR, but did not state how much it paid for MedCare.
“As part of this agreement, we are working together to ensure a smooth transition for all employees and clients,” Wincheter said. “This change in ownership involves transferring all assets, including ambulances, trademarks and technology systems, allowing AMR to take responsibility for the existing operations. Together, we are confident that AMR’s strong local leadership presence and core expertise in U.S. health care operations is the best way forward to ensure the ongoing future success of MedCare.”
According to AMR, the purchase will allow the company to expand its existing exceptional services in Springfield and surrounding areas. Under the agreement AMR will be working to transition all employees and clients to AMR by year end.
A letter to the town from Andrew Levine of the law firm Barret and Singal in Boston, stated, “AMR intends to provide service coverage for the areas currently served by MedCare under AMR’s existing ambulance service license.”
Levine said AMR will separately seek the appropriate approvals from the Office of Emergency Medical Services, OEMS, for any required expansion of its license, as needed.
“The parties do not intend to transfer MedCare’s license to AMR,” Levine said. “MedCare will work with AMR and OEMS to ensure that the termination of its services occurs in a manner that does not adversely affect the service area(s).”
Town Administrator Steve Ellis and Selectboard Chairman Richard Kuklewicz told the board they attended a meeting about the transition to AMR ambulance services, and spoke to the board about their impressions following the meeting. Ellis said he spoke with both the chiefs of Montague Center Fire and Turners Falls Fire Districts about the transfer of services.
“(My impressions) were that they had taken very proactive steps to ensure they are able to rehire the vast majority of staff who are already serving in a role for MedCare. As a matter of continuity, that made me feel much better about potential transition that might be occurring,” Ellis said. “There were no indications that there were immanent changes the economics surrounding the process, specifically we have a no cost agreement that we enter into for those services.”
Ellis said the town plans to be engaged with AMR to ensure the quality services provided to the town do not change.
“We want to make certain that the quality of care and responsiveness are not only as good, but, ideally, improved over what MedCare provides. We’re fortunate to have a secondary backup ambulance capacity at the Turners Falls Fire District,” Ellis said.
Kuklewicz said he was glad he and Ellis attended the meeting.
“I think the first thing that happens, through the transition of one business to another, is there’s always concern and turmoil and reapplying to a new company,” Kuklewicz said. “It sounded like they’ve worked through many of those, and there is a pretty high percentage of folks that are coming back.”
He said the company’s size is an advantage, because the company can provide training, recourses and facilities. Kuklewicz also had concerns about AMR, including the learning curve about the distance that ambulances will need to travel in their service territory.
“Everything comes down to economics …” Kuklewicz said. He said he believes AMR can look at concerns and do some creative scheduling to help with some of the challenges in covering the region. “Overall, I felt it was a relatively positive meeting. I thought better than I did going in — it looks like it really won’t change much on the cost side for the town, but we’ll have to wait and see. I’m going to be cautiously optimistic.”