Harford County?s volunteer based EMS service has been plagued by a steady increase of calls for service, equating to an increase of approximately 7 percent per year, and these calls for service are not expected to decrease. The problem has become so pronounced that even Harford County Executive David Craig has allotted $560,000 in his budget for the next fiscal year to benefit the solution ? the Harford County EMS Foundation.
Though county officials can sight reasons for the increase in the calls for service – a growing population and misuse of the 911 service – it quickly became clear in the past year that something needed to be done to augment the ranks of Harford?s volunteers. The Foundation was the answer.
“Basically with thegrowth of the county, certainly the number of calls have increased,” said Dottie Arnold, president of the Harford County EMS Foundation and 29-year EMS provider for the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company. “When you are looking at [EMS] companies that have back to back to back calls…the volunteers just could not keep up anymore,” Arnold said.
This sentiment was echoed by Rich Gardiner, spokesperson for the Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association.
Gardiner said volunteer companies in Bel Air, Joppa-Magnolia and Aberdeen saw the need to augment it volunteers with paid EMS responders prior to the Foundation coming on-line. These companies plan to keep their paid EMS providers, and will also make use of the Foundation as needed.
The concept behind Foundation resembles that of a temp agency. If one of the 12 volunteer companies throughout the county realizes they cannot man a shift with volunteers, a call is placed to the Foundation and a paid responder fills the void.
wThrough a contract with Harford County EMS agencies, the Foundation then pays its employee ? $12 an hour for an EMT and $18 an hour for a paramedic ? and then the company that received the service of the paid responder reimburses the Foundation.
The Foundation, which was first established last year, now has a staff of 34 part-time EMS responders, most of which are full-time EMS providers in other jurisdictions.
It is a non-profit that is a separate entity from Harford County, though county leaders saw fit to allocate $405,000 to the start up costs of the Foundation last year.
“The idea of the foundation is not to take over the volunteer system, it?s meant to supplement the system,” Arnold said.
