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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

Tower Ambulance Commission to look at ways to move forward

Jodi Summit
Posted 7/6/22

TOWER- The Tower Area Ambulance Commission intends to move forward, albeit slowly, and look at a different business models to oversee the area’s ambulance service.Rural ambulance services …

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Tower Ambulance Commission to look at ways to move forward

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TOWER- The Tower Area Ambulance Commission intends to move forward, albeit slowly, and look at a different business models to oversee the area’s ambulance service.
Rural ambulance services across the state, and nation, are struggling, and members have noted these challenges do not relate to the quality of the service and its volunteers, but to business models which expect a service to fund itself through insurance revenue.
At their June 26 quarterly meeting, with just a quorum of its members present, the group agreed to set a brainstorming session to discuss potential funding/business model options for the service. But the actual date for such a meeting, as well as the agenda, is yet to be set.
“We can talk about the options, the pros and cons, and then bring it back to Tower and the townships,” said Kevin Norby, city of Tower representative on the commission.
Eagles Nest rep Larry McCray said his township has “no interest in continuing down the road we are continuing on.”
He urged the group to focus on the creation of a joint powers board to oversee the service.
“Anything less than that is a waste of our time,” McCray said.
Norby said that forming a joint powers board is “absolutely on the list of options.”
Norby noted that both Kugler and Breitung townships, who were both absent from the meeting, have said they will participate in the planning group.
The creation of a joint powers agreement would take the ownership of the ambulance service away from the city and turn it over to a board representing the member governments. This would allow for the possibility of some sort of tax support for the service.
The ambulance service has struggled financially since moving to a 24/7 paid-on-call service, which is required by the state. Under the oversight of former director Steve Altenburg, the service put in place a salary structure significantly higher than any surrounding service. This caused salary costs to rise dramatically, while reimbursements from private insurance and Medicare/Medicaid have not increased proportionally.
“We do want to get this process started sooner rather than later,” said Tower Ambulance Director Dena Suihkonen.
The board took no action on the ambulance subsidy agreement for 2022. The only issue of disagreement is an indemnity clause placed in the agreement at the insistence of Greenwood Township, which dealt with insurance liability. Norby said the city wants to discuss the issue with its own attorney before agreeing to insert the clause again.
“Should we be reinventing the wheel if TAAS is going away?” asked McCray. “I just can’t see this continuing to be a viable business...I think we should go with the existing indemnity clause so we can get this year’s township funding.”
“We are abiding by the contract in spirit,” noted Norby. “If they say it is a small thing, we can go ahead.”
Greenwood Township, which did not have a representative present at the meeting, is looking at conducting their own study on the ambulance service issue. The township has called for proposals to conduct a study that they are expected to review at their July 12 meeting. The cost of such a study, and how they would fund it, has yet to be determined.
The ambulance service is having another busy year, with 143 calls through the end of May and an additional 26 transfer runs in that period. Suihkonen said the service turns down at least 60 percent of requests for transfer calls because it depends on finding additional service members who are able to take them (and not already on paid-on-call at that time), and that most of these transfer requests occur in the middle of the night. The service currently has ten EMTs, with two current EMRs who will soon become EMTs. The service also has 13 EMRs. Suihkonen also told the commission that the city has paid what was owed for transfer miles in 2021 into the subsidy account, which now sits at $117,979. The service had a bank balance of $8,672 at the end of May.