By Hannah Kaufman
Morning Sentinel
WATERVILLE, Maine — With the area’s only inpatient hospital closing in June, rescue crews are grappling with the cost of transporting patients out of the city to receive emergency medical support.
After Northern Light Inland Hospital’s closure, rescue services facing higher-than-ever call volumes may be forced to send crew members to hospitals 20 miles away or farther, leaving stations short-staffed in the event of a fire or other emergency. With each municipality balancing time and resources, the area’s dense web of mutual aid may be stretched thin.
Chief Jason Frost of Waterville Fire-Rescue said the hospital’s closure could strain emergency medical services in the city. Waterville transported 3,800 patients on emergency medical calls last year, he said, and a little more than 900 of those went to Inland.
“On the surface, this is a big deal,” Frost said. “And then as you peel everything away, it’s like: This is even bigger than I thought it was. We’re working on it every day.”
Frost and other Waterville-area fire chiefs will discuss the future of the region’s emergency services Thursday with representatives from MaineGeneral Health Center, which operates Thayer Center for Health, an outpatient center in Waterville. If the hospital cannot handle a large portion of Waterville’s 900 transports, Frost said the department will have to take patients to Augusta or Skowhegan.
“We’re going to have to start running farther to bring patients to the hospital, which is going to have a big impact on health care in the cities, for sure,” Frost said. “We’re able to do what we do with two ambulances because we have two hospitals that are so close to us. But if those don’t exist anymore, we’re going to have to make some changes, and that could affect our budget.”
The hospital announced its June closure in early March. The notice comes in the middle of budget season, when municipalities have outlined costs and await town approval. Others have locked in next year’s spending already, before the change was made public.
Some municipal budgets have already been adjusted. Chief Mike Murphy of Winslow Fire Department said he requested an extra $2,000 from the town for fuel, counting on extra revenue from ambulance billing to make up the rest.
“We were lucky we were in the process of building the budget when this came up, so I was able to ask for extra funds for the fuel,” Murphy said. “But it’s going to impact all the way around. I mean, we get paid per loaded mile, so it’s going to affect everybody. Higher pay, but the insurance companies, once it affects them, how are they going to react?”
Outside of Thayer, the closest hospitals are Redington-Fairview in Skowhegan or MaineGeneral Medical Center inpatient hospital in Augusta. It’s possible Thayer will direct ambulances toward the other hospitals, said Chief Travis Leary of Clinton and Fairfield’s fire departments.
“The talk has been that if Thayer is overwhelmed, they’ll have to basically go on diversion, and that will mean that we’ll have to transport down to Augusta,” Leary said. “So obviously that will be more wear and tear on the trucks, more fuel, cost and time.”
Frost said the Waterville Fire Rescue budget is already in the City Council’s hands. A budget workshop is scheduled during a special meeting 6 p.m. Thursday — an opportunity to discuss impacts on fuel, truck maintenance and travel time.
Time on the road means time away from the station. The region’s mutual aid network allows multiple departments to assist on fire calls or cover the occupied department’s station, but the system works only when crews also have time and resources to respond to their own emergencies.
Murphy said a group of local fire chiefs met in late March and reinforced their promises of mutual support.
“We all sat down, and we all discussed it, and we’re pretty much just going to back each other up,” Murphy said. “And then if we get a long transfer, we talked about doing a crew call back for people to cover the station where the longer transports take place.”
Crew staffing isn’t what it used to be. Leary said Fairfield and Clinton are already short full-time firefighters, but over the last couple decades, the number of volunteers firefighters on their call list shrank from 35 to 14.
“Call volume has increased tremendously over the years, and staffing hasn’t,” Leary said. “It’s just been a constant battle for us.”
The closure of the hospital also marks the end of Inland and Purdue Global’s simulation center. Frost said the center has been a cost-effective boon to training paramedics, and without it, Waterville’s training budget may spike.
Fire chiefs hope to get answers to their questions at meetings this week. Murphy said the sooner departments can prepare, the better.
“There’s so many unknowns,” Murphy said. “It’s hard to prepare — we’re trying our best to prepare for the worst, but not knowing what the worst is.”
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