By Paul Welersdick
Chico Enterprise-Record (California)
PARADISE, Calif. — The Town Council Tuesday will decide whether to set a public hearing on a proposal to allow the Fire Department to charge for medical aid calls, or scrap the controversial idea.
The council previously authorized Fire Chief Mark Haunschild to craft a fee schedule for providing medical services at traffic collisions and for home and business calls.
Fees per call would be $235, or $82 by subscription.
The council had originally been prepared to vote on the matter at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Town Hall, 5555 Skyway, but by Friday morning the agenda had been amended to only setting a hearing.
The proposal is meant to recover costs by the department associated with response to calls other than fire protection, the department’s main purpose.
Susan Smith, administrator for Sunshine Cottages, the town’s second largest residential elder care facility, said her residents would surely be affected.
Firefighters respond to falls, heart attacks and other medical emergencies at the facility.
The facility has three buildings with a total capacity of 50 residents. Smith said the facility calls for medical emergencies two to three times a month.
“I have a fragile population, they’re more likely to need medical services,” she said.
At times when the Fire Department isn’t needed, Smith will request only an ambulance, but firefighters tell her they’re required to respond to certain types of calls, she said.
At other times, Smith will call the Fire Department’s non-emergency number if she knows an ambulance isn’t needed, but often it’s overkill for six firefighters to be in one small room to lift an elderly resident off the floor, Smith said.
She questioned the Fire Department’s solution to declining budgets, and said streamlining the department or reworking protocol to perhaps allow only an ambulance to respond, were other solutions.
The plan written by Paradise Fire Chief Mark Haunschild for Tuesday’s agenda, claims insurance companies in other areas are already billing for medical calls to cover costs to fire departments, but Smith was sure they wouldn’t pay for both an ambulance and a fire engine.
Under the new billing plan, “good Samaritan” callers wouldn’t be billed, but only the “end user.”
Legally, the department can bill for services that aren’t routine, Town Attorney Dwight Moore said when the Town Council first allowed Haunschild to develop the medical billing plan.
With roughly 75 percent of its call volume coming from medical calls, the department feels it must find a stream of revenue to fund what the general fund doesn’t cover.
The town has budgeted roughly $100,000 annually from the program.
Copyright 2009 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
All Rights Reserved