Alex Powers
Albany Democrat-Herald, Ore.
(TNS)
Mar. 13—When a Lebanon fire truck rolls up to a burning building, career professionals and unpaid volunteers step off the vehicle.
And the tax district undergirding the department that responds to medical crises and burning buildings can’t find enough of either.
At Lebanon Fire District, a decline in reimbursement for ambulance calls is coinciding with a decline in volunteers. Meanwhile, emergency calls generally have increased as the city’s population verges toward 20,000.
“And that’s not sustainable,” said Joe Rodondi, the district’s fire chief.
Adding even more insult, Rodondi and other advocates argue, relatively small governments were overlooked in federal pandemic response.
Hundreds of billions were made available to help gap soaring costs in city halls and county courthouses, but special tax districts — standalone agencies typically covering small and rural populations — were not eligible.
Pandemic
Already suffering declining revenue and volunteers, Lebanon’s fire service was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s a combination department that runs two 24-hour fire stations, and two more stations with limited hours to extend the district’s response to burning buildings and medical emergencies during the day.
Lebanon Fire District foots one of three ambulance providers in the 2,309-square-mile expanse of Linn County. Albany and Sweet Home provide the others.
By the end of 2020, all three services were overloaded. Hospitals were overloaded. Rodondi said it wasn’t uncommon to send ambulances from Lebanon to Klamath Falls, 214 miles away, or to Portland.
Medical crews from the district traveled as far away as locations in California and Idaho, Rodondi said. And frequently, Rodondi pushed through overtime pay to keep Lebanon’s four ambulances rolling.
“There’s a cost to have employees,” he said.
Overtime
The funds set aside in the district that year for payroll did not anticipate an overcrowded health care system.
About one in five patients hospitalized in Oregon was sick with COVID-19 in December 2020, and more than 660 were hospitalized with the disease at any one time.
Lebanon’s four ambulances ran nearly all the time.
“I outpaced the budget,” Rodondi said.
Much of the cost overrun is from transportation between facilities. Emergencies frequently go straight to Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital.
Then ambulances transport stabilized patients from one emergency room to a larger hospital with specialized services not available in Lebanon.
In response to the financial crisis, Lebanon Fire District has two moves: Reduce service or increase its revenue.
Rodondi said he shut down the fourth ambulance in early 2021 to balance the budget. The truck likely won’t be staffed again until 2024.
“It’s still not in the black. I’m just slowing the hemorrhaging,” Rodondi said.
Cost
Much of the increased need for ambulances came at the cost of federal reimbursement.
Lebanon’s fire service wrote off nearly $4.9 million in fees that the tax district couldn’t recover from billing for patients insured under Medicaid and Medicare.
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