BVA issues ultimatum

On March 29, 2012, Boundary Volunteer Ambulance Service, Inc. ("BVA") notified the Boundary County commissioners that it wanted to enter into a new contract with Boundary County that paid BVA significantly more money to provide ambulance services to Boundary County's residents.

The $8,000 the county has paid BVA annually since 1998, $6,700 of which comes from state auto licensing funds, is simply not sufficient for us to continue providing to the citizens the ambulance service county commissioners are statutorily obligated to provide.

Without additional funding, BVA will have no choice but to close its doors and stop providing ambulance services at 12:01 a.m. June 14, 2012.

BVA explained to commissioners that financially, it simply could not continue to operate without significant additional public funding. This is not to “pad” our emergency medical technician's pockets, but to provide the people of the county with the best possible care, transportation and rescue and extrication for the sick and injured who request our services, all while continuing to promote the individual growth of our members and our community.

The reasons are many:

Dramatic increases in call numbers (800 plus) and rising each year, we have dwindled to a small core group responding to a majority of those calls;

High and increasing numbers of unpaid or low paid calls (over 250 per year) due to ever-tightening insurance, Medicare and Medicaid caps;

Significant increases in operating costs (e.g., fuel, insurance, repairs, etc.);

A vehicle fleet that is old and getting older quickly (all but one of our five ambulances is older than 12 years, as are our two extrication units) and aging equipment and supplies (ropes, extraction, gurneys, electronics, etc.).

BVA's contractual demands include, among other things: establish the ambulance service district levy at .04% level; fund BVA at $80,000 per year for 2012 and 2013; award BVA all levy funds beginning in 2014 when they become available (these funds will be earmarked for the ambulance district fund and not the county’s general fund as BVA is not a county department but a private contractor); construct and maintain a building to house the ambulance service; enter into a seven year contract with BVA so we can reasonably make the investments in personnel and equipment necessary to continue to provide high quality services.

In exchange for meeting those contractual demands, BVA committed to continue its 47 year history of service to Boundary County; update its equipment on a regular basis; paying its volunteers for their service and sacrifice to help offset the money they invest in equipment and ever increasing mandatory training time; to hire paid professional staff to ease the burden on the volunteers and to move toward a higher level of care (Advanced Life Support - ALS services) and to achieve that objective by 2016.

At this point in time Bonner County EMS, Kootenai County EMS, Lifeflight and Medstar (weather permitting) have to do all this county’s ALS transports.

Currently, Boundary Volunteer Ambulance does not have the staff or vehicles equipped to provide ALS. Therefore, there is an obvious time delay issue in transporting critical patients in a timely manner.

This also means there’s a lot of revenue leaving our county.

BVA's calls for financial help have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Since April, BVA has met with the county commissioners on several occasions to discuss a new contract. Unfortunately, no contractual arrangement has been reached.

Nevertheless, BVA remains naively hopeful that county commissioners would meet our reasonable contractual requirements, understand BVA's plight and be willing to plan with us for the future of ambulance service in Boundary County.

Therefore, for these reasons and others, BVA notified the County that it was exercising its contractual right to terminate the 1998 contract in 30 days, which ends June 13, 2012.

Boundary County will need to make alternative arrangements between now and June 13, 2012, to fulfill its statutory obligations to the residents in every corner of Boundary County.

We at BVA are sorry it has come to this; it is not what we wanted. We want to continue to serve but we simply cannot continue unless our requests, which are reasonable compared to all available options, are met.

Business as it has been done is simply not an option.

The people of Boundary County deserve high quality services and BVA, unfortunately, is simply no longer in a position to provide it, and neither is any other group in this county.

Some seem to think that by forming separate EMS entities within our fire departments is a cost-effective approach. In reality, separating funds among various districts or entities will bring significantly higher cost to the taxpayers of Boundary County while reducing the level of service BVA currently provides.

In short, this means that it will cost the county's residents far more money for far less service and it will endanger lives.

Simply put, no other entity would provide an ambulance service at the same level currently provided by BVA for the same cost and to the satisfaction that county residents have come to expect from their neighbors in BVA for the past 47 years.

The service, quite frankly, you deserve.

If you support the service Boundary County volunteers have afforded their neighbors continuously for nearly half a century, please let our Boundary County Commissioners know, in a voice they can't ignore.

Your life or the life of someone you love may hang in the balance.