Less than three years after state officials concocted a plan to boost payments for ambulance services, emergency medical administrators say they're still struggling to keep their doors open.
Leaders of ambulance organizations from across Vermont converged on the Statehouse Friday to talk about insurance reimbursement and workforce issues that continue to cause problems in the increasingly expensive business of emergency treatment and transport.
Those issues are affecting the ability of some services to respond to calls, or even to stay open.
“I am absolutely concerned,” said Drew Hazelton, operations chief at Brattleboro-based Rescue Inc. “I'm concerned about the fact that we have services that have closed and we have services that are on the verge of closing.”
Ambulance financial issues are not new, and some of the problem is due to the vagaries of the insurance reimbursement system.