POINT PLEASANT — Patient care facilities may no longer be able to use Point Pleasant’s emergency medical services for non-emergency transportation of patients.
The mayor and council at the March 10 meeting unanimously adopted an ordinance ensuring that the borough’s emergency services are used for emergencies only.
If used for non-emergencies, the facility that requested the service must compensate the borough for use of these services. This ordinance amends Chapter 26 of the borough code titled “Emergency Medical Services for Patient Care Facilities.”
The ordinance defines a “patient care facility” as “all state-licensed nursing homes, rest homes, health maintenance organizations, assisted living facilities, health-care facilities providing inpatient services and other licensed or unlicensed medical care providers with the capacity to treat 10 or more outpatients simultaneously.”
The measure comes after borough officials became aware that certain patient-care facilities located in the Point Pleasant area have been placing emergency calls for transportation of their patients, summoning the services of the volunteer Point Boro First Aid Squad when the calls are for non-emergency medical care.
According to the squad’s website, the squad responded to 1,519 calls last year.
“Serving the community since 1968, Point Boro First Aid is a volunteer-led, nonprofit, independent organization dedicated to providing the Point Pleasant Borough community with professional, courteous and skilled emergency medical and technical rescue service,” the website states.
One member of the public, Chris Maine, who is a Point Boro EMS member, spoke during public comment explaining a little more about why this ordinance is so important.
He said, “The purpose of this ordinance is for extended care facilities. They tend to call us for non-emergency transports via the 911 system. With this, we will still be going when we are paged out there, but this is more for them to get their act together with their private companies.”
He said the EMS has been called out on multiple occasions for multiple non-emergency calls, from abnormal labs to a fall that occurred multiple days prior.
On any given week, he said the EMS would be called out to these facilities between three to five times a week, with some of these actually constituting an emergency.
He also said there have been multiple instances where the EMS squad would arrive at the facility, only for another ambulance to already be there, or show up just after they arrived.
“They like to play the game of who can get there faster, either with the private company or with us,” said Maine. “We have had it in the past where we showed up at the same time a private company would show up.”
Chief of the Point Boro EMS, Thomas Alexander, told The Ocean Star on Tuesday, “We have been noticing there has been an uptick in these non-emergent calls to health care facilities here in town. These health care facilities are required to have a contract with some sort of private or hospital-based provider.”
Alexander stressed that the Point Boro EMS will respond to every call they receive, whether it is an emergency or not. This ordinance puts pressure back onto these health care facilities to get their contracts in order, or to get new ones.
He also said that one of the facilities they have been to in town has called the Point Boro EMS out 29 times this year, with some calls being non-emergencies.
“The biggest point I want to make sure is we are not in any capacity refusing to answer a call,” stressed Alexander. “Any call that comes in, whether it is emergent or non-emergent, we are going to answer them…(These facilities) priority is getting their contract to answer them.”
This is an excerpt of the print article. For more on this story, read The Ocean Star—on newsstands Friday or online in our e-Edition.
Check out our other Point Pleasant Boro stories, updated daily. And remember to pick up a copy of The Ocean Star—on newsstands Friday or online in our e-Edition.
Subscribe today! If you're not already an annual subscriber to The Ocean Star, get your subscription today! For just $38 per year, you will receive local mail delivery weekly, with pages and pages of local news and online access to our e-edition on Starnewsgroup.com.
 6x10 4c.jpg)
