COLRAIN — Gary Ponce, director of the Colrain Volunteer Ambulance Service, gave updates to the Selectboard and residents on the status of the private nonprofit as discussions continue about the formation of a West County Regional Ambulance Service.
On Tuesday night, Ponce shared that after having meetings with town officials across western Franklin County, a public forum could be coming to the towns in the proposed regional ambulance service’s coverage, which includes Buckland, Colrain, Charlemont, Hawley, Heath, Leyden, Shelburne (including Shelburne Falls) and Rowe.
Only Heath and Leyden pay fees to the Colrain Volunteer Ambulance Service. Heath pays $22,000 annually, while Leyden pays $12,500. All other revenue is generated from insurance, with Ponce saying that the nature of the service means that people with private insurance are charged more, as they can only charge a certain amount to people with Medicare or Medicaid.
“Even though we look fine, we’re struggling,” Ponce said, adding that the payroll alone costs around $4,300 a week, meaning that annual payroll is around $223,000.
Traditionally, Ponce says, Colrain has not paid for the ambulance service, though the ambulances themselves are stored at the Colrain Fire Department building. He noted that “without that building, it’s very difficult to run an ambulance service.”
Despite the lack of income, he said that the Colrain Volunteer Ambulance Service is still in the black, and that the main issue is a lack of staff.
“I’m 66 years old,” Ponce said. “We need to facilitate something that’s going to be sustainable.” He added that Charlemont’s municipal ambulance service has five people all over 65 years of age.
As the only paramedic-level ambulance service in western Franklin County, he said the demand for a paramedic ambulance has tripled the amount of responses taken on by the Colrain Volunteer Ambulance Service. The point of sharing all of this information, he said, was to let everyone know that this model will not be sustainable within the next three years.
While not diving into the numbers and costs surrounding the discussion on the West County Regional Ambulance Service, he said that a lot of good information came from the last meeting of ambulance directors and town officials. The group, he said, are ready to move onto the next steps of mapping out what the shared ambulance service would look like for the towns involved.
He said the ambulance is fully staffed during the day, but that after 6 p.m., calls coming into the Colrain Volunteer Ambulance Service would involve the staff leaving their homes to drive to the ambulance at the Colrain Fire Station before heading to the call.
The average time from the initial call to patient pickup is around 21 minutes.
“[Like all of you], I want an ambulance to show up … and have some empathy for me,” Ponce said.
Informed Response Program
Later in the meeting, Police Chief Chris Lannon gave updates to the Selectboard over the implementation of the Informed Response Program.
Lannon shared that he had been working on this program for the past nine months in conjunction with Shelburne Police. He said the program would essentially take over what the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office’s TRIAD Program was doing before, which was “a crime-prevention and wellness initiative aimed at protecting the safety and welfare of our senior citizens.”
“With TRIAD backing down a little… we kind of lost that mechanism of tracking people,” Lannon said.
This Informed Response Program would prioritize residents in the town who receive special services during an emergency. This would be a completely voluntary initiative, with residents choosing whether or not they’ll enter themselves into this program. A notice of this new program will be sent out to residents in the town who are 64 or older.
Lannon said that QR codes would be included with the notice, so that residents could sign up through their mobile device.
Paper copies can be requested through the Police Department. Any hard copies that residents submit to become part of this program will be destroyed after the information is transferred over to the electronic system.
“Everything is confidential,” Lannon said. “We’ve built a database to house this information, … I’m the only individual who would have access unless there’s an emergency.”
The chief emphasized that the new program would not guarantee service to those signed up, but that in an emergency, Colrain Fire and the Colrain Volunteer Ambulance Service would know which residents to prioritize.
