BOSTON EMS

[agregularguy]

The wages are a compensating differential. Yes, they pay in the low twenties(after you're pinned) for BLS, which is high anywhere; but as I said residency is a requirement. Every single aspect of your life will be more expensive. Rent in the city is astronomical, car insurance can easily be double suburban rates if you have the wrong address, even a gallon of milk is going to cost you more. So yeah, they pay you more per hour, but most of the difference is going to be eaten up by the cost of living increase.

I have never heard of BEMS running anything but B/B and P/P units. It's true a lot of the "basics" at BEMS are actually medics hoping they can hang on long enough to promote to ALS(which takes several years on average), but officially they can only work as basics. That being said, I dont work there and dont have the boots on the ground knowledge to say for sure; hence the "to the best of my knowledge" trap door.

Just to hammer home how much more expensive stuff is there, when I flew back into Boston a few weeks ago for a weekend to see my friends/old coworkers I happened to pass by a new looking apartment complex. It looked pretty similar to the one I'm currently in down south, so I figured I'd check it out. For a 1 bed you're STARTING at 2700. While this one apartment complex isn't necessarily 100% representative of all the other housing prices in the city, it does highlight just how pricey that city is. Then not to mention the food, insurance, etc aspects of living in a major city that are higher as well.
Moral of the story is, just because a job's pay looks good on paper.. doesn't always mean it is.

 

[Tigger]

SSH has an ambulance service, but it's all transport. The days of SSH non transport fly car services are well behind us. Same with Norwood, Morton, Jordan and so on.

They would send one of their ALS trucks to back us up on emergent facility calls every now and again. Not sure why we weren't getting the fire department, must have been a Brewster thing.

 

[MarshalFoch]

They would send one of their ALS trucks to back us up on emergent facility calls every now and again. Not sure why we weren't getting the fire department, must have been a Brewster thing.

If it was in Weymouth (or Quincy/Braintree prior to 2015) it's most likely because EMS is provided by Fallon, and the two companies have a bit of a rivalry. SSH does still send units responding to emergencies now and again when available.

 

[MarshalFoch]

Fallon (the company I work for) is currently training AEMT's, but it's not clear exactly what the payscale or deployment model they're going to go for is. Worth looking into as AEMT's are almost unheard of in Eastern MA.

 

[Tigger]

If it was in Weymouth (or Quincy/Braintree prior to 2015) it's most likely because EMS is provided by Fallon, and the two companies have a bit of a rivalry. SSH does still send units responding to emergencies now and again when available.

It was usually Linden Ponds in Hingham. Working for Brewster when they were brand new was often pretty cowboy, but we made it work and it was kinda fun.