Possibly Next Week—

Paid EMT Shifts Expected

By John Voket

Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Emergency Medical Technicians who are most familiar with the town’s roadways and population will be the first to access proposed paid day shift opportunities, possibly as early as next Monday, the outgoing chief of the Ambulance Corps told The Bee Tuesday.

Ambulance Corps Chief Ken Appley, who is voluntarily ending his tenure November 30, said he believes the emergency stopgap paid shift measure, combined with new recruitment programs and a newfound level of cooperation and communication between the volunteer corps and its fiduciary Ambulance Association, will help solve intermittent weekday response concerns.

In recent weeks, several issues involving the 80-plus member corps and the association’s nearly $1 million public nonprofit corporation that funds town ambulance services have come to the fore.

Those issues include First Selectman Herb Rosenthal’s increasing concerns in recent months as the ranks of ambulance volunteers were stretched thin responding to numerous daytime calls. The intermittent shortages of available responders, primarily Monday through Friday from 6 am to 6 pm, were causing delayed response times and forcing the town to lean heavily on neighboring community ambulance companies for mutual aid.

Last week, Mr Rosenthal called for the corps and association to work together to solve the response time problems or he would be forced to step in and try to address the issue himself. By statute, the first selectman is responsible for, and has authority over, the community’s ambulance service above all other volunteer agencies or their leadership.

According to Chief Appley, late last week the corps and association leaders were able to strike a tentative agreement aimed at solving the response issue. He said as soon as next Monday any willing volunteer would be able to apply to standby at the ambulance garage during 6 am to 6 pm weekday shifts, and they will be compensated for their time through the association.

“It means a staff EMT, who is also a local corps member, will head out to the scene the moment that call comes through,” he said.

Short of recruiting a new group of volunteers who would cover crucial day shifts for free, he feels the local access to paid shifts is the most viable short-term solution.

“We’ll start the paid program for local EMTs and we’ll have a backup plan in place that involves hiring an outside service if this program doesn’t work out,” Chief Appley said. “We’re hoping to start [the paid shifts] next week. We’re getting the necessary paperwork squared away.”

Newtown has the busiest volunteer ambulance service in the region, responding to more than 1,900 calls in the past 12 months. But as calls for mutual aid to help cover the rapidly escalating call volume increased, it was evident the ambulance service would have to tap less traditional means of getting their ambulances out to the scenes of calls more quickly.

That issue was in the process of being addressed through a compensation plan for corps volunteers.

But after commissioning a proposal to outline a paid shift program for the volunteers, the association’s board abruptly changed direction on the idea, seeming to favor the idea of hiring an outside vendor to provide out-of-town personnel to staff the daytime shifts.

During the association’s annual meeting earlier this month, former association chairman Malcolm McLachlan told corps members he was advised by an out-of-state legal expert that it would be illegal to pay local EMTs to work for the same organization for which they volunteered. Since that time, a choice of viable options emerged that would allow local volunteers who know the community best to receive compensation to staff critical shifts through an outside staffing service.

Since that story appeared, it was widely circulated among the local EMS community that Mr McLachlan had resigned from the association’s Board of Trustees, a fact he confirmed to The Bee Wednesday morning.

Mr Appley said that through additional research by corps leaders, he learned that the corps could initiate temporary stopgap measures to ensure optimum response time, including legally paying volunteers to staff critical shifts.

“We’ll put a six-month maximum on this stopgap program while we work on increasing the volunteer membership base to enhance our availability during the week,” he said. Besides reaching out to local EMTs who are not currently affiliated with the group, Chief Appley said the corps plans to launch an aggressive campaign to get more community members involved with the service.

He said the corps is also considering establishing a junior ambulance group or explorerlike post to help initiate younger people to the fast-paced and vital community service.

“With the cutoff for members at 18 years old, we barely get them trained before we lose them [to college or other paying jobs],” he said. “If we can recruit and train younger volunteers, we can hold onto them longer.”

He said any resident interested in becoming an EMT and a Newtown Ambulance volunteer can contact the corps headquarters at 270-4380. The local ambulance group holds EMT training about twice each year, but neighboring departments, hospitals, and local colleges also offer EMT certification.

“Obviously all the monetary donations to the association help, but it’s the EMTs that are out there day and night doing the work,” he said. “In that respect, the volunteers [who donate their time] are significantly more valuable to the community right now.”

Once the temporary paid day shift is in place, Chief Appley said a volunteer will be on standby at the ambulance garage weekdays from 6 am to 6 pm. The moment a call comes through, that volunteer will head to the location in the ambulance while other available volunteers will go straight to the scene in their own vehicles, meeting up with the rig at the call.

In addition to the ambulance, a paid paramedic intercept is also on 24-hour call in Newtown. But since that paramedic is shared by Newtown, Bethel, and Redding, there is less of a chance that responder would arrive at the scene of a call before local ambulance crews.

Another source close to the ambulance corps told The Bee that by signing an agreement acknowledging they would not be responsible for the minimum 30-hours per month volunteer requirement, it would allow the association to pay volunteers for specific shifts under the stopgap measure.

Chief Appley said, however, that it is the corps’ aim to try and get enough volunteers recruited to eliminate the stopgap measure before it expires in May 2005.

“We’re going to be looking at the response time every week, and reporting on whether or not it’s successful at each month’s association meeting,” he said. “We just want the community to know that the ambulance corps volunteers are working as quickly as possible to address our response times, and that we are all fully committed to bringing them the best service available. But with nineteen hundred calls in the past year, it’s been a tough situation for everyone.”