Gloversville ambulance service has some support, but fiscal questions remain (2024)

As anxiety persists over emergency medical transport coverage in Fulton County’s largest municipality, the likelihood of getting an in-house provider in the next budget may come down to costs, demand and revenue projections, officials say.

For Councilman-at-Large Wayne Peters, it's certainly worth a closer look.

“It’s going to be a need that we might have to have eventually,” said the Republican lawmaker. “I'm going to do some research before I answer too many questions.”

Stump City has been without an emergency medical transport provider for five years. In 2019, the Ambulance Service of Fulton County closed for good after failing to pay insurance costs and compensate employees.

Currently, the city — which has the highest call volume in the Land of 44 Lakes — is covered by the Johnstown Fire Department, St. Johnsville Area Volunteer Ambulance Corps and Amsterdam-based Lake Valley EMS under a county contract.

There were more than 5,000 EMS calls and 1,100 transports between hospitals as of the first three quarters of last year, all of which were taken. Some were delayed, according to Fulton County Emergency Management Director Steven Santa Maria.

“Quite honestly, there are times when the calls in the city of Gloversville can be overwhelming,” he said. “And what I mean by that is these calls don't come in just one at a time in most cases. There are times when we're seeing three and four calls drop in Gloversville in a matter of 30 to 60 minutes.”

Santa Maria has engaged in talks with Gloversville Fire Chief Thomas Groff over the concept in the past and supports it as a means of opening up availability for other providers.

SAVAC covers portions of both Montgomery and Fulton counties and Lake Valley EMS covers much of the eastern half of the Fulmont region and a small portion of Hamilton County.

Resources, Santa Maria said, are sometimes stretched so much that basic life support units are deployed in situations which require advanced life support units. Additionally, out of roughly 1,500 intermunicipal transfers from Nathan Littauer Hospital, wait times can be extensive.

County wait times for all calls were more than a minute above the national average as of 2023. It’s a far cry from the lengthy wait times of 2019 when two county ambulance services shut down.

But Gloversville Councilwoman Ellen Anadio, R-4th Ward, doesn’t want to take any chances. She has long been an advocate for getting an ambulance in the city.

“It seems to have gotten better over time, but my concern is getting to people quickly enough,” Anadio said. “I would like [an ambulance], but we'll have to look and see the budget and go from there.”

The concept also has support from freshman Councilman Michael Stover, R-6th Ward, who noted that he’s interested in getting a group together to map out the logistics of such a move.

Councilors Marcia Weiss, D-1st Ward, and Elizabeth Batchelor, D-3rd Ward, expressed some concerns over the ultimate price tag while the city already navigates a $21.3 million budget with a $2.2 million deficit.

Batchelor believes that it’s important to look at the retirement costs associated with such an endeavor. With limited revenue streams, so-called legacy costs have been an ongoing concern for city administration officials.

“I think an ambulance is important, but I also think we have to think long and hard before we take on big, big things like ambulances because no matter what anybody says, it's a costly project,” Weiss said.

Mayor Vincent DeSantis believes the city will have to look at other comparable models in order to move forward.

“There's an upfront expense in everything. And there is a revenue stream that is possible from it and it's so hard to predict, because we don't know what the revenue stream would be,” DeSantis said.

Close by, this includes Johnstown Fire Department’s EMS system, which was first established in 2019. The neighboring city relies on third-party billing and contractual support from Fulton County to cover expenses.

One of the biggest monetary challenges is the Medicaid differential, a formula used for billing partially based on agency call volume. For rural providers like Johnstown, it results in a more limited funding stream regardless of long-distance calls.

“In order to get to a budget intelligently, we have to compare costs and benefits,” said DeSantis. “Having an ambulance service is certainly a benefit to our people, but we still have to do the cost-benefit analysis to do that and it's hard to do that without hard numbers.”