Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
A hundred thousand dollars – that’s how much Jefferson County’s Emergency Medical Service (EMS) lost in revenues during a two-to-three month period earlier this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Fire Rescue Chief Derrick Burrus cited the $100,000 loss in a memo that he wrote to the CARES-Act distribution committee to explain the reasoning behind his $186,157 request for a new COVID-19 prepped ambulance. Meaning that the new unit will come equipped with an ultraviolet light for added disinfection.
Jefferson County, Burrus wrote in his memo justifying the request, needed an ambulance that could be “dedicated to COVID patients.”
The ambulance, which the committee recommended for approval and which the Jefferson County Commission recently approved, is expected to be delivered by December. The money for the purchase is coming from the $664,685 that the county received in the first wave of CARES-Act funding, federal money distributed to communities to offset some of the costs incurred in combating and mitigating the spread of the pandemic.
Burrus offered that the reduction in his department's revenues largely occurred in March and April during the initial outbreak of the pandemic, when it was expected that hospitals would be inundated with COVID-19 patients and people began avoiding going to hospitals for fear of contracting the disease.
“The COVID crisis resulted in a reduction of EMS calls because patients were hesitant to go to the hospital,” Burrus said.
Often, he said, the nature of the emergency was such that that EMS crews were able to handle the situations without need for transport of the patients to the hospital. But even in cases where the patients warranted transportation to the hospital, they would refuse to go, he said.
A typical transport, Burrus said, costs about $1,200 per patient.
“If we’re down 80 or so transports, that’s about $100,000 right there,” he said. “That’s a big hit to the budget.”
When Burrus put in his request for the ambulance in late July, the number of COVID-19 cases in the county had tripled in the previous 30 days and continued to climb, he noted. As of Saturday, Aug. 22, Jefferson County’s count of COVID-19 cases stood at 488.
Burrus explained that the new ambulance will allow for quick decontamination of the unit by virtual of its ultraviolet light. Currently, he said, whenever a COVID-19 patients is transported, it requires a deep cleaning of the unit, which can take up to an hour.
During which hour, he said, the unit is out of commission. Given that the department has only three ambulances, the decommissioning of one ambulance for even hour can constitute a crisis if multiple emergencies occur simultaneously, he said.
Too, he noted, the department has signed an agreement with the state to be available for the transport of COVID-19 patients outside the county if needed. The pickup of these patients, he said, would be in Tallahassee, and the transport could be anywhere in the state.
“The new ambulance will make a big difference,” he said.
And even when the pandemic passes, as most fervently hope that it will, the new ambulance would still serve as a needed enhancement to the department’s fleet. .
As for the $100,000 loss, Burrus said the department had receive a $20,000 grant in compensation. Which funding, he said, was appreciated, but it came nowhere near the $100,000. The department, he said, would simply have to absorb the loss.
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