By Stephen Hagan
Gloucester Daily Times
ROCKPORT, Mass. — The Select Board is considering privatizing town ambulance services.
Currently, ambulance services are provided by the Rockport Fire Department, an on-call department, while calls during the overnight are handled by the Gloucester-based Beauport Ambulance Service.
Meeting last week, four Select Board members voted to support the idea of further privatizing its ambulance services, while Select Board member Laura Evans abstained. The vote authorizes Town Administrator Mitchell Vieira to begin negotiations with a “third-party” ambulance company to provide full-time coverage in Rockport.
Select Board Chair Ross Brackett said consideration of privatizing ambulance service has been taking place for some time as an effort to ensure total ambulance coverage in Rockport.
“As the board is aware, we’ve had ups and downs over the past year with the ambulance department,” he said. “I haven’t seen much progress being made.”
“I don’t believe every shift is getting covered. That’s just not going to cut it for us. Obviously, our main goal is getting an ambulance to cover the town of Rockport. We want to make sure the town is covered, whether it’s a third party or locally.”
The situation needs to change, Vice Chair Denise Donnelly said.
“Given the situation that we’re facing as a town with respect to the lack of volunteers and the need to provide 24-hour coverage, I believe that the only responsible thing for us to do as fiduciaries of the town, both fiscally and just being responsible for the care and feeding of our citizens when it comes to ambulance care, is to privatize,” she said. “I think it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Beauport Ambulance recently offered to provide ambulance services in Rockport 24-hours-a-day at the same price it is charging the town for coverage from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., Donnelly said.
However, Select Board member Laura Evans said the plan to change ambulance services needed further consideration — possibly a public hearing or an ad-hoc committee created to consider the idea.
“I just feel like the decision to privatize without exploring other options, you know, we can’t go back after this,” she said. “We’re at the end of the line, surrounded on three sides by water. If we decide not to take care of our own with our own emergency ambulance service, it’s going to be very, very difficult to ever build that back.”
Donnelly had praise for the residents who volunteer at the on-call Fire Department.
“We are extremely grateful for the volunteers who have persevered in trying to keep the ambulance service operating during the daytime hours,” she said. “It’s a huge undertaking. They’re pretty much at their breaking point. But I think we have to take action. It’s just not fair.”
Further complicating matters, according to Vieira, was recent notice from the Massachusetts Ambulance Association that cuts from Medicare and Medicaid would affect the reimbursement of ambulance services.
“It’s impacting all ambulance services, public and private,” he said. “There would be a financial hit if we were operating at full capacity. That’s certainly something that is concerning looking down the road.”
For her part, Evans said town officials and board members have not fully explored the ambulance service options available, adding that while Beauport Ambulance does an adequate and proper job, they are a commercial enterprise.
“We haven’t gotten the public involved in a conversation about this,” she said. “They can charge us whatever they want going forward. People need to understand that it’s going to cost them a lot more money.”
By contrast, Select Board member Don Southard said he believes the decision “is an easy one,” adding Rockport’s volunteer firefighters deserve praise.
“I think the group has done a great job here in our town with volunteering to do this,” he said. “But for a number of reasons, the age of the population, the fact that people are working two jobs, volunteering is not exactly something they can fiscally take care of. I worry that some of these calls that are happening, as we sit here, are not being taken.”
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