ORDER-2021-124 : Ambulance Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal 2022 in the amount of $945,353.00 (Nine Hundred Forty-Five Thousand, Three Hundred and Fifty-Three Dollars).

Transcript (~8 min @ 1:23:46)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 1:24:00 Speaker 1: filled night chief can you hear us we can hear you okay

▶ 1:24:20 Jeff McNaught: thank you chief for your patience it's been a glitchy night for us but we're getting through it

▶ 1:24:26 Jeff McNaught: Next up, we have Order 2021-124, Ambulance Enterprise Operating Budget for Fiscal 2022 in the amount of $945,353.

▶ 1:24:42 Jeff McNaught: Chief, if you want to speak to that, you can. If not, we can take questions from counselors.

▶ 1:25:07 Speaker 5: I think you're muted, Chief. Council McMaster?

▶ 1:25:10 Shawn M. MacMaster: Yes, Mr. Chairman, we do have Mr. Bergendahl here from PRO-EMS who does our billing, so I think we could hear from him.

▶ 1:25:20 Speaker 5: Thank you, Council McMaster. Mr. Bergendahl, would you like to lead us off here?

▶ 1:25:22 Speaker 2: Sure, just as the pandemic has affected everything that we've heard about tonight, the ambulance service in Melrose is certainly no exception. It's been pretty standard across the entire country That during the period of time for the pandemic. Emergency transports in particular were impacted. Some places more than others, but the average across the board has been about 10 and 10 to 15% lower. Over the last few months, we've seen that rebound. Myself also, you know, as I also operate. Pro in Cambridge, and I'm a paramedic also. We have seen that across the board, and we've also seen it across the entire country. There are actually a lot of EMS systems that are in distress, because many of the EMS services and agencies across the country depend upon the revenue from billing in order to sustain their operations. You're going to be hearing more about it. There's been stories in New York Times about how decreased call volume and decreased revenue is impacting Services everywhere Melrose was hit. Uh, to some extent in during the pandemic year. And again, over the recent months, we've seen it rebound some. But what we did was we really looked at the. When we looked at the numbers to come up with the discussion on. the rates and there's a a very modest three percent increase that everybody talked about i don't think i i if i'm not mistaken i don't think there was any increase last year and what we did was in order to make the numbers where 2020 was an outlier related to the pandemic what we did was we looked at the numbers from from uh april of 19 to march of 20 a non-pandemic time frame and looked at again the numbers from March of 20 or actually April of 20 until March of 21 to use as comparison and we could you know we certainly were able to see the the differences so in in coming up with the chart and the rates that you see tonight we we really went back and looked at the 2019 numbers where 2020 was more of an outlier and you can see from from last year revenue was down it was down a little bit and certainly that is related to you know less transports over the time frame um in the modeling i think we anticipate that the transports will return um my own personal commentary with no real thing other than the little crystal ball in my head is that people have short memories and we will have the return to the call volume and and And we'll have, you know, a return to emergency service. It will be more gradual. But I think that, you know, within a few months, everyone will be back up to normal, especially in terms of EMS operations. so the chart you have in front of you and the race that they're based on are based on what we've seen as historic numbers across many years now of billing for uh melrose and using the pair mixes that we've seen historically we one thing we do have is a lot of great historical data to base this on and again like i said considering last year a bit of an outlier uh that's the chart and the like i said modest three percent rate increase you see in here today uh some of it is to try to make up a little bit for lost revenue from last year but again always uh like we do every year and uh the the rates are are established tied to the cost of providing the service and so we try to set the rates and do a model um in in to make sure that the ambulance service in melrose is sustainable and i think we've been able to do that across these many years and uh i think the um the model that we have here also maintains that um at the same time it also maintains the most humane billing practices and policies we could have um in terms of financial hardships uh bill forgiveness uh waiving co-pays for city residents and uh that continues on as it has since day one so i'm sorry i've rambled on a bit but uh there you guys go we appreciate the overview uh mr bergendahl so

▶ 1:30:36 Jeff McNaught: um thank you for that do i have any uh counselors who have questions on this order seeing none

▶ 1:30:56 Jeff McNaught: what's the will of the committee motion to recommend we have a motion to recommend made by council mcmaster seconded by vice chair eccles madam clerk will you please call the role chair

▶ 1:31:06 Speaker 1: mcnaught yes yes vice chair eccles yes councillor traymond tozy yes councillor mcmaster yes councillor garrick yeah counselor Grigoraitis yes council of Migliorelli yes counselor stewart yes yes

▶ 1:31:38 Speaker 1: counselor thomas counselor thomas council of jamaladeen yeah president sanella yes one last try council counselor thomas and yes the motion passes