ILLINOIS (WAND) - Central Illinois neighbors rely on paramedics and ambulance services for emergency care. But the Illinois State Ambulance Association said ambulance services are at their breaking point.
"The ambulance will always show up, but is the ambulance going to show up in a clinically meaningful time?" Chris Vandenberg, president of the Illinois State Ambulance Association, told WAND News.
Cities that use private ambulances for transporting patients after the initial emergency are dealing with backlogs in the hospital because ambulance services are short staffed.
"Patients that need to go to Springfield or to Champaign or down to St. Louis because they need the higher level of care of the larger hospital there. If they're waiting days for that, those people are alive still, but they're going to have considerable ailments and considerably longer recovery times," Vandenberg explained.
But in cities like Springfield, private ambulance services are the only EMS provider. Which means short staffing can become a life or death situation.
Sangamon County Central Dispatch told WAND News in 2021 there were 32 instances when there was no ambulance ready to respond to 911 calls.
"We are sounding the alarm because we're getting to the point where its critical," Vandenberg added.
He said the crunch comes down to dollars.
"Somebody is saying, gosh, this is a really hard job and I'm making $14 an hour. I could go work as a cashier at Target - that's a problem," Vandenberg said.
He said ambulance services are struggling to keep up with competitive pay thanks to increased costs during the pandemic and stagnant Medicaid reimbursement rates.
"Eighty percent of our revenue comes from the Medicare program, which is the federal side, and the Medicaid program, which is the state side. So when you have 80% in both of those programs, they have a fee schedule, they tell us exactly how much they're going to pay us," Vandenberg explained.
The Illinois State Ambulance Association is asking the state legislature for $55 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars from the federal government to help cover the costs of testing, PPE and hazard pay throughout the pandemic.
