Delta Junction residents will soon have to make a decision about whether — and how — they’ll restore emergency medical services after the community’s only ambulance service, Delta Medical Transport, ended its contract with the city.
Delta Medical Transport announced in January that it would stop providing service to the community in February.
For the last two years, Delta Junction paid the company almost exclusively with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, one of the packages of federal relief money that went out during the pandemic. Last year, the city’s budget for emergency medical services was over half a million dollars.
At a meeting on Jan. 28, residents got a chance to tell the city’s community action committee how they want to go about funding ambulance services in the future, ranging from starting an online fundraiser to making it subscription-based. But there was a common thread in the meeting’s public comments: resistance to the idea of tax hikes.
Delta Junction resident Clark Richardson speculated about whether his community would accept that solution.
“When it comes to things like taxes and fees — which are really taxes under a different name — I know there is a lot of hesitation from citizens in this community about going down that road,” Richardson said.
Aaron Reinert is a contractor for the state’s assessment of emergency medical services. He told attendees that the city could experience a million-dollar annual shortfall by renewing its ambulance service — not counting start-up costs. He said yearly fundraisers and charitable donations are not likely to help make up that difference.
But this is a pretty common problem throughout rural America, according to Reinert. He said a large portion of the country is served by private, rural ambulance services, which often do fewer runs than providers in more populated areas. And that means they’re getting less revenue from billing their patients’ insurance companies. He said the issue has been a long time in the making.
“That comes from a long story of an EMS evolution in America, and how we changed in the 80s under the Reagan Administration to a fee-for-service model,” said Reinert. “Prior to that, the federal government actually played an active role in funding EMS across the United States.”
He said the funding crunch is also getting worse because of more recent changes at the federal level. The No Surprises Act limited out-of-pocket costs for emergency medical care. It was signed at the end of the previous Trump administration and paused by the Biden administration.
Reinert said it’s also a huge challenge to train and keep staff. The level of training required to be an emergency medical technician has risen over time, and there are just fewer people who want to do it. Volunteering has been on the decline in the U.S. for almost 20 years.
“The number one question I get from elected officials is: ‘When did EMS start costing so much?’” said Reinert. “Of course, our answer is: ‘It has always cost this much.’ We're now trying to replace what we call the volunteer subsidy — the single greatest funder of EMS across America is volunteerism.”
Delta Junction city officials will soon review six different ways to fund the ambulance service. Each option includes taxes and fees, which could be levied on things like fuel or marijuana sales.
The ideas will go to the city council for approval on Feb. 4. Residents will vote on them in a special election that could come as early as Feb. 25.
