If you call for an ambulance, chances are that an all-volunteer squad will respond and that you’ll only be charged for medical supplies on the way to the hospital. But this budget season, local officials are exploring the idea of imposing fees, as much as $450 per ride. And as the closed-door discussions continue between the city, county and the volunteer rescue squads, it remains unclear where the money would go and why the fees are necessary.
There are several volunteer rescue squads, the biggest being the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad (CARS). Annually, those groups average 14,684 calls and transport roughly 12,000 to the hospital. Albemarle County has only one station, Hollymead, with paid staff for ambulance service. The City of Charlottesville is in the midst of implementing a plan to establish an ambulance service with paid staff.
 Despite talk of ambulance fees, city Fire Chief Charles Werner says that we’re not heading toward an all-paid staff of EMS workers. |
The idea of charging fees came from a joint city/county/rescue squad task force that reported to the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in the fall. Representatives from CARS and from the Charlottesville and Albemarle fire departments, which oversee any paid ambulance responders, have no comment about the proposed plan. It’s still uncertain whether all agencies would apply fees.
Often, volunteer squads are reluctant to charge fees out of fears that community donations would drop off. The Virginia Office of EMS, which offers administrative help for localities working to establish fee-for-service programs, published a document last spring about how to market such billing changes. The document mentions a number of circumstances in which an agency or locality might attempt billing for service. Among those pressing concerns are inadequate staffing, poor response times and a dip in financial support.
While the state office “does not necessarily support billing for services,” spokesperson Elizabeth Singer says it does encourage localities to consider it as another source of revenue. About 35 localities around the state charge for ambulance services, according to Singer, including Orange County, Roanoke City and Chesterfield County.
Staffing is not a concern for CARS, says Squad Chief Dayton Haugh, who notes that its numbers have grown in recent years to a current active staff of 170 volunteers.
Haugh says it is still unclear whether money from ambulance billing would go to the county or directly to CARS. “Most of the time, I think it’s safe to say that if a municipality is billing that it won’t recover enough to cover the cost of providing the [emergency] service,” Haugh says. Officials have estimated that billing would provide between $2.8 million and $3.8 million annually. The EMS cost of all the agencies combined is more than $10 million.
City Fire Chief Charles Werner says that any plans for a fee-for-service ambulance system in the city are contingent upon decisions made between the volunteer rescue squads and Albemarle County on the issue. He notes that CARS will continue to serve most emergency calls made in the city.
“I don’t think there’s any need to go in the direction for a full-career EMS squad in the near future,” says Werner.
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