The Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services (KBEMS) had the difficult task of appearing before the Interim Committee on Health Services in Frankfort on Tuesday to deliver sobering news about the state of emergency medical services in the Commonwealth.
KBEMS chair John Holder told the committee that staffing shortages persist for emergency medical services (EMS) in the state. EMS, Holder said, has an attrition rate of 21%, meaning two of ten providers will leave the profession for a variety of reasons including compensation and an ever-increasing workload as staffing diminishes, and call volumes have increased by 30,000 runs.
“My conversation with a lot of these medics, they just can’t stretch this thin anymore,” Holder said about the paramedics with certification who are leaving the profession.
Each year KBEMS says the state loses more paramedics than are gained.
EMS services regularly call with concerns that they cannot meet staffing requirements set by regulation – meaning they don’t have enough paramedics to staff ambulances. Those regulations, however, have been diminished in an effort to allow providers to meet the minimum requirement of one paramedic on duty.
“It truly is a crisis. We have services that are going to shut down if we can’t find a solution,” Holder said.
There are multiple issues at play. The paramedics are underpaid, which is a direct correlation to “abysmal reimbursement” on the cost of an ambulance run.
KBEMS worked with Rep. Deanna Frazier Gordon, R-Richmond, on House Bill 484 in the last session to deal directly with the issues. There is a need for funding of $6 million over two years, and a fix to reimbursement rates.
Holder said KBEMS is seeking to make sure they at least break even on ambulance runs -especially in rural areas of the state without the urban tax base to shoulder the cost of the 911 runs.
Legislators on the interim committee said they were interested in what they could do to help the state of EMS.
The Kentucky League of Cities Board of Directors has voted to support legislation in the upcoming legislative session permitting a city or county government to collect EMS fees to fund emergency services in the same capacity as the collection of 911 fees.
