Boundary Ambulance has slow year

BONNERS FERRY — Due to the low revenue this year, Boundary Ambulance has been forced to cut back. In what they hope is a temporary situation. Boundary Ambulance is dropping the part-time EMT position to an on-call position, meaning there will only be two full-time EMS personnel at the station at a time.

Previously, there were two full time positions and one part time position staffing the station at any given time. This meant that if an ambulance was sent out on a call or transfer, there was another ambulance immediately available to respond to a call.

This model is still fairly new to Boundary Ambulance, which used to be a strictly volunteer based service. Under that model, the response times were significantly slower, since the volunteers had to first respond to the station from wherever they were. Boundary Ambulance has been growing recently and dedicated to serving the community faster and better since that time.

“It was a normal situation when it would be 15-20 minutes before people could come in and actually come out. Now it is down to one minute and 20 seconds is our average,” said Nancy Russell, Chairperson of the Ambulance Board. “When we added the EMT as paid, our time went down even further, because they were already there. We didn’t have to call them in.”

The paid part time EMT position, added in 2018, has improved response times, and reducing that position will impact Boundary Ambulance and the community it serves.

“It was really hard for us to back down and say now we are going to take the EMTs to on call,” said Russell. “In this county, we shouldn’t have to do that. We need to support the community and really have the care there for them as quickly as possible.”

The reasons for the cutbacks are due to revenue. That budget is set, based on 2017 and 2018, and this year there were significantly less paid calls for the ambulance. Only about 40 percent of the revenue for the nonprofit organization comes from the taxpayers. The rest is made up from calls, transfers, and other paying jobs, such as being present during wildfires.

“This year we had our revenue down significantly because our revenue is based on the work we do — if we run a call, if we transport a patient, then that puts revenue back into the account. If we run a call and we don’t transport a patient, then we don’t get paid for that,” said Jeff Lindsey, EMS Chief for Boundary Ambulance. “This year, forty percent of our call volume has been non-revenue calls, meaning, for whatever reason, we did not transport a patient.”

The budget this year was based on about 1,100 calls a year and 700 transports a year. According to Lindsey, this year there are roughly 100 calls short of the previous years at this time.

“If our call volume drops, then our revenue drops,” said Russell.

Boundary Ambulance is automatically called out whenever the fire departments are called to a scene, and vise versa. If they do not transport a patient, this is an example of a non-revenue call.

“We don’t charge for anything but transporting patients to the hospital,” said Lindsey.

With revenue down, Boundary Ambulance has suffered.

“If the money is not there, we all suffer. I’ve taken a huge salary cut for me. Everybody has had to step up to try and save the business,” said Lindsey. “If we run out of money in November… who is going to run the ambulance?”

The improvements made for the staff and the community they serve have been beneficial, but harder to maintain during a slow revenue year.

“This year we finally gave our staff health care, which they have never ever had, which also obviously increased the budget,” said Russell. “I don’t want to take that away from them.”

Boundary Ambulance receives roughly $360,000 a year from tax dollars, which is about 40 percent of their projected budget. With the dramatically reduced call volume, it has diminished the finances needed to continue to run at the level that it was prior to Oct. 1.

“We have asked the county to start to see what they could do as far as, if there is even a potential to something such as a levy override so we can figure out how we can get an extra $75,000 to $100,000 a year so we can be stable as an ambulance service moving forward,” said Lindsey.

They have also implemented plans to work with South Boundary Fire, which will house an ambulance and one EMS personnel from Boundary Ambulance, and supply one of their own.

“We would staff one of the people and they would staff the other person to make that a functioning ambulance,” said Lindsey. “To me it is a win-win. That could solve a lot of our housing issues.”

Russell and the other board members are also discussing ideas to bring in more revenue, whether it be from fundraising events or levy. They plan to start doing open forums for the community early next year.

“I would like to get the community input as to what they would like,” said Russell.

Boundary Ambulance has moved forward in the last two years, making positive changes for their employees and the community, but a slow year has set them back. They are actively working on ways to work through the growing pains, and hope to continue to provide the best service for the community.