Mixed agency

MMM Medic11

MMM Medic11

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So one of the two towns we service just informed us that they want us to have a crew at the building 24/7 365. They said they don't care if they are paid or volunteers but they want us to assure them that we will have an ambulance out with a response time under 10 minutes. Right now we take 97.3% of our calls and our response time is around 15 minutes. Our squad is thinking about hiring PD EMTs to cover some times during the day. Any suggestions or advice or does anyone else have a mixed squad. We on average run about 3000 calls a year and it is only going to increase next year. Thanks in advance for all the help.
 
Sounds like a very fair, and needed, demand. Honestly, hybrid departments are becoming much more common and my bet is that they will outnumber completely volunteer agencies in the next few years. More and more places are demanding paid, professional ems agencies.
 
Thanks for the response! We knew it was coming just did not think it would happen so soon. How does it work having both a volunteer crew and paid. I feel that people won't want to volunteer if they are second out for a call.
 
You could rotate calls as long as the requirements are the same. If they don't want to be in the building and instead would like to respond from home than tough feces, you have to adapt with the rest of the world.
 
MMM Medic11 said:
Thanks for the response! We knew it was coming just did not think it would happen so soon. How does it work having both a volunteer crew and paid. I feel that people won't want to volunteer if they are second out for a call.
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Most of the departments that do this have the paid crews do the day with the volunteers covering nights. If the volunteers don't want to be on second hits.... Well, there is a reason we're shifting to paid departments.
 
We normal have a crew at the building. Just some days we don't have people that sign up from 6-8 am and occasionally we have some afternoon gaps from 4-6pm. I like the idea of switching each call. Would a paid crew be unhappy with that? We are also looking at hiring current members.
 
MMM Medic11 said:
We normal have a crew at the building. Just some days we don't have people that sign up from 6-8 am and occasionally we have some afternoon gaps from 4-6pm. I like the idea of switching each call. Would a paid crew be unhappy with that? We are also looking at hiring current members.
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If it was me? The volunteers can be first out whenever they're staffed for all I care, I get paid the same either way.

The 5-8 and 16-19 hours are generally the toughest to cover. You might be able to do part-timers on 12s at first.
 
Okay. We have a strong group of high schoolers and people for nights from 1800-0600. We would only need a paid crew from 0600 to 1800. We have beds and everything so each nights crew sleeps there. We are looking into PD EMTs for the 12 hours. Have you heard anything about paid also volunteering in the same department?
 
MMM Medic11 said:
Okay. We have a strong group of high schoolers and people for nights from 1800-0600. We would only need a paid crew from 0600 to 1800. We have beds and everything so each nights crew sleeps there. We are looking into PD EMTs for the 12 hours. Have you heard anything about paid also volunteering in the same department?
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I worked on my degree where we researched this very issue. Having paid members who also volunteered at the same department was a no go. Bottom line was if they worked for the department in a paid position then they couldn't also volunteer. It has to do with wage and hour laws and doesn't work out well for the department if they figure out that they want to sue later for the hours that they "volunteered" for.
 
High schoolers?
 
luke_31 said:
I worked on my degree where we researched this very issue. Having paid members who also volunteered at the same department was a no go. Bottom line was if they worked for the department in a paid position then they couldn't also volunteer. It has to do with wage and hour laws and doesn't work out well for the department if they figure out that they want to sue later for the hours that they "volunteered" for.
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That's what we were thinking. However because we are hiring from within some members stated they still wanted to volunteer especially at out big events like Marathons and parades.
 
BLS vollie squad? Who does your ALS?
 
RocketMedic said:
BLS vollie squad? Who does your ALS?
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ALS is done by the surrounding hospitals. BLS transfer patient for ALS. However, a few of our members are also paramedics and if we went paid we may run a ALS rig during the day.
 
That sounds needlessly complicated. Just convert the volunteer agency to a paid ALS service
 
RocketMedic said:
That sounds needlessly complicated. Just convert the volunteer agency to a paid ALS service
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The way it works in our area is all hospital based ALS services and then BLS is used for transport. Most towns are still all volunteers. We would be the second in our county to go to a mixed model. We have paid firefighters during the day that run ALS calls with us.
 
Does your community support professional responders?
 
I don't think the community cares either way. Right now our fire department has two paid stations and another three all volunteer stations. In the other town it is just volunteer. If we however went to paid during the day we would have to do soft billing to support the staff and that might upset some residents. Our two towns that we cover are growing our call volume is increased about 10% over last year so far and they are building new assisted living facilities and apartment buildings currently. So there is a need for a paid crew.
 
You're in Jersey, aren't you?
 
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