PUTNEY — As defined in state statutes, “'Emergency medical services' means an integrated system of personnel, equipment, communication, and services to provide emergency medical treatment” (emphasis added).
Rescue Inc. is an integrated system of personnel, equipment, communication, and services to provide emergency medical treatment.
Rescue Inc. delivers basic and advanced emergency life support, basic and critical-care transport, stand-by services at public events, a technical rescue team, child safety seat installations and inspections, and Covid-19 vaccinations throughout Vermont EMS District 13, plus Stratton in District 12 and Chesterfield and Hinsdale in neighboring New Hampshire.
Vermont Department of Health Emergency Medical Services District 13 is mandated by state law “to foster and coordinate emergency medical services within the district, in the interest of affording adequate ambulance services within the district” (emphases added).
The district must further “have a board of directors, composed of a representative of each of the medical facilities, ambulance services, and first responders operating within the district.”
Title 24 of Vermont Statutes (Municipal and County Government, Chapter 71, Ambulance Services) does not mention municipal governments. What jurisdiction over district emergency medical services does a municipal government have in Vermont - a Dillon's Rule state, which means that municipalities receive all of their legal authority from statutes enacted by the Vermont General Assembly?
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The Town of Brattleboro is the keystone of emergency medical services in 13 Vermont and two New Hampshire towns because it is home to one-third of Rescue Inc.'s population and the shortest distances and times from dispatch to return via Brattleboro Memorial Hospital.
The town's withdrawal from Rescue Inc. is cream-skimming minimizing costs of providing emergency medical services within its borders.
Absent keystone Town of Brattleboro, Rescue Inc. no longer can provide an integrated system of personnel, equipment, communication, and services to provide emergency medical treatment, having lost one-third of its ongoing ambulance-service and other revenues while still having to pay most of its ongoing operating and overhead costs: creating a conservatively estimated $1.1 million annual operating deficit, based on figures from its public IRS Form 990 financial statements.
Ambulance-billing rates (unregulated) in the remaining 14 towns will have to be increased by about 50 percent or Rescue Inc. soon will be bankrupt.
This is not “an integrated system of personnel, equipment, communication, and services to provide emergency medical treatment” as mandated by Vermont Statutes.
The Town of Brattleboro's unilateral withdrawal from Rescue Inc. is the destruction of an integrated system of personnel, equipment, communication, and services to provide emergency medical treatment: the gravest crisis in Rescue Inc.'s 56-year history since 1966 - disdaining and imperiling residents of and visitors to 14 lesser towns while looking out for number one.