The Brunswick News
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Without paramedics to back them up, county firefighters could arrive at a fire and still need to wait on additional help to arrive.
And the folks filling the ranks of the Glynn County Fire Department are not the type to wait if someone’s life is on the line, said county manager Alan Ours.
“I know our firefighters pretty well,” Ours said. “If two firefighters arrived on the scene, they’re not going to wait on someone else to arrive. They are going to go in.”
And that is why, after months of extensive research, Ours will recommend Tuesday at the Glynn County Finance Committee meeting that the county not pursue a private contractor for emergency medical service.
The meeting takes place at 2 p.m. at the Harold Pate governmental building, 1725 Reynolds St.
The finance committee could still vote to recommend the county send out bids to private EMS companies for a cost comparison. A final decision would rest with the county commission, which instructed Ours in May to research and determine whether it would be cost effective to privatize the county’s EMS service.
But Ours has concluded that any potential savings would not be worth the shortcomings to the county in service provided.
“The county’s current ‘All Hazards Approach’ has worked well and should continue to be utilized,” Ours concluded in his report, the paperwork of which is about an inch thick.
Because all of Glynn’s emergency medical personnel also are firefighters, each fire station responds to a fire call with fire truck and an ambulance, two people in each. That puts four firefighters on the scene, the minimum number of firefighters needed to engage a structure fire as recommended by the National Fire Protection Administration.
Having a private EMS firm would eliminate the dual service available from each station, thus requiring two firefighters from another truck at another station to arrive in support, Ours said.
“If the county contracted for EMS services a fire engine would need to wait for other engine companies to respond to a structure fire before it would be recommended that they enter into a building, according to the NFPA standards,” the report concluded.
While firefighters and EMS workers serve together, the services are billed separately. The $3.4 million budget for EMS appears as a line item on the county budget.
Residents are taxed separately for firefighter service. The current fire protection millage rate of $1.68 per $1,000 of assessed value is paying for a $7.4 million budget.
One private EMS provider estimated the county might save from $500,000 to $800,000 annually by switching to private EMS service. The county would not have to buy and maintain ambulances, nor would it have to collect money charged for rides to the hospital. County EMS is presently owed some $1.5 million for ambulance transport and other services for patients.
However, the fire department would have to raise its millage rate to generate the $2.2 million needed to make up for the shortfall in firefighters at each station if EMS went private. Also, the switch could cause a rise in the county’s ranking with the nonprofit Insurance Office Service, a nationally recognized standard for establishing property insurance rates.
All in all, Ours said, it is just not worth it.
“That’s the conclusion I reached,” Ours said. “Glynn County Fire Department has a combined department. If we separate EMS from it, what we lose are firefighters. It really came back to having four firefighters on the scene. It’s critical. Certainly the effort to reduce costs is important, but the safety of the public and our firefighters is more important.”
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