SAND LAKE AMBULANCE NEEDS YOUR HELP

The Sand Lake Ambulance is seeking additional financial assistance from the town and the ambulance board of directors provides answers to some questions that people may have:

Q: Is Sand Lake Ambulance a public agency?
Sand Lake Ambulance is a not-for-profit corporation organized under the New York State not-for-profit Corporation Law. We are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Service Code. This means that all of our revenue must be put back into the organizational budget. We are not a public agency and are not formally affiliated with the local fire departments (although we work closely with them).
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Q: Is Sand Lake Ambulance a volunteer or a paid organization?
Sand Lake Ambulance is a volunteer agency, run exclusively by volunteer members. To raise our level of services and improve response times, we supplement our volunteer staff by contracting with a staffing agency to keep a paramedic in-house 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also contract for an emergency medical technician (EMT) between the hours of 6 AM and 6PM Monday through Friday. This has allowed us to keep our response times among the best in the county.
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Q: What is the difference between a paramedic and an EMT?
EMTs are trained to provide Basic Life Support (BLS), which includes basic first aid for illness and injury, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and basic airway management. Our EMTs are volunteers, except for weekdays.

Paramedics are trained to provide Advanced Life Support (ALS), which includes all BLS skills, plus advanced airway management protocols, interpretation of ECGs, and the administration of life-saving medications by injection or IV lines. About two-thirds of our calls require a paramedic. Our paramedic staff is paid.
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Q: If this is a non-profit corporation, why do you bill for your services?

There are many operating expenses related to running an ambulance service. The vehicles and building must be paid for and maintained, diesel fuel must be purchased in large quantities, and medical equipment and supplies must be paid for. As oil prices increase, diesel fuel and any petroleum-containing products (including medical supplies made from plastics) are becoming progressively more expensive. Maintaining a paid paramedic in-house and weekday EMT staffing when most volunteers are at work is also a very significant expense. Although we would like to operate based only on donations from the community, this is not even remotely possible. Despite prompt and efficient billing, Sand Lake Ambulance has operated at a substantial loss for the past three years.
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Q: Do you receive money from the Town of Sand Lake and/or from Rensselaer County?

We do not receive any county or state funding. We also do not receive any funding from or through the fire departments. We do receive money from the Town of Sand Lake tax receipts. In 2006 (the last year for which complete data are available) this came to an estimated 31% of our operating budget. The bulk of our revenue has to come from donations and revenue recovery (billing of patients or their insurance companies). While both these sources of revenue have increased over the last couple of years, and we have not received enough of either to meet our operating expenses since we introduced Advanced Life Support (ALS) service in 2005. Consequently, as noted above, Sand Lake Ambulance has been operating at a substantial loss. We recently presented our financial dilemma to the Sand Lake town board and explained to the board members the critical importance of continuing the provision of ALS service to town residents. The town board will be considering our request over the next several weeks.
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Q: If you didn’t have a paid paramedic in-house, what would happen?

Not all ambulance services are staffed with paramedics. Sand Lake Ambulance was not staffed with paramedics until the middle of 2005. Before Sand Lake Ambulance became an ALS agency, it took 15-45 minutes for a paramedic from outside the town (often Troy) to reach our patients. In situations where transport could not be delayed, the paramedic would “intercept” the ambulance en-route to the hospital.

Currently, our fully equipped paramedic arrives on scene within 3 –5 minutes of a call being dispatched and sometimes 5-10 minutes before the volunteer-staffed ambulance arrives. This is far better for our patients than having to pull over on the way to the hospital so that a paramedic from outside the town can board our ambulance. Clearly, the sooner a seriously ill or injured patient receives ALS care the better the outcome.
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Q: Can you staff with volunteer paramedics?

A small number of our volunteer members are trained as paramedics, but in order for our agency to be certified to provide ALS services, we are required by the NYS Department of Health to have ALS staffing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our volunteers generally work full-time and have families and other personal obligations. Many of our volunteers also serve in our local fire departments and/or in the National Guard or military reserves. It has become increasingly difficult in recent years to recruit and retain reliable volunteers. Other small local ambulance services face similar challenges and sometimes are not able to complete a crew to get their ambulance out of the garage. This results in an ambulance having to be dispatched from a neighboring agency, which delays services. Our paid paramedics (and paid weekday EMTs) enable us to generally avoid this situation to ensure that town residents receive advanced life support emergency medical services as quickly as possible.
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Q: How can I support Sand Lake Ambulance?

There are several ways to support the ambulance service. The community can and does generously support us through tax-deductible donations and many residents volunteer to serve. You can also support us by letting elected officials know how important you think we are and how important you think the availability of prompt of ALS service is. As noted above, we recently approached the town board to seek additional financial support to enable the continuation of ALS services and your statement in support of that action would be extremely helpful.
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Q: What is involved in being an ambulance volunteer?

Volunteers typically are on-call one night per week (6PM to 6AM) and one weekend every five or six weeks, and also attend monthly member meetings and periodic drills. Training to become an EMT is usually a 14-week class offered two or three nights per week. Training to become a driver is on-the-job and the duration of training depends upon call volume and the progress shown by the driver trainee. Most longtime volunteers eventually serve in some office (e.g. Secretary, Treasurer, Board Member), which entails additional responsibilities. People who want to support us with their time, but do not want to ride on a crew are also welcome to donate services (e.g. clerical skills, accounting, fundraising, etc.). Call us at 518-674-2221 or stop by one of our meetings (7:00, the last Thursday of every month) for more details.
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Thank You From Sand Lake Ambulance

The Members of Sand Lake Ambulance would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our neighbors and friends who continue to give so generously through our 2008 Fund Drive.

In this fast paced, crazy world we live in, we thought it would be a wonderful gesture to send hand written thank you notes to each and every one of you. Intelligence and common sense prevailed and we realized the cost of mailing them could be better spent on maintaining our Paramedic / Advance Life Support (ALS) program with equipment upgrades and educational services.

We, as a community, are very fortunate to have the best pre-hospital care available, 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week. Sand Lake Ambulance strives to deliver the highest in pre-hospital care through our dedicated volunteers and with the financial assistance of wonderful people like you.

If you have received our mailing & live outside of the Sand Lake Ambulance territory, please support your local volunteer ambulance agency