Española Hospital plans to slash paramedics’ hours and to operate only two of its six ambulances starting March 8 in an effort to cut costs.
“I’ve had to initiate cutbacks,” Hospital Emergency Operations Director Bill Mauldin said.
Hospital Administrator Derrick Yu acknowledged ordering the cuts, emphasizing that he is cutting overtime hours rather than staff. The hospital will save $9,000 a month — or $108,000 a year — by cutting paramedic overtime pay, Yu estimated.
Those savings will come at the cost of possible delays to 911 emergency call responses and increased demands on Española and Rio Arriba County emergency resources, city of Española and Rio Arriba County emergency response officials said. Yu did not warn the County of the changes.
“We have an agreement with the County to provide two ambulances,” Yu said. “It does not specify what we do with those two ambulances. If we went to one ambulance, we would have contacted them.”
A 2007 memo of agreement between the hospital and the County states the hospital is the designated County Hospital and will “maintain a minimum of two hospital ambulance units that meet Public Regulatory Commission requirements for advanced life support. At least one ambulance will remain in Rio Arriba for emergency response at all times.”
County Manager Lorenzo Valdez acknowledged that even with the cuts, the hospital will be technically compliant with its obligations to the County. But County Commissioner Chairman Elias Coriz was not happy with the change.
“(Yu) still owes some explanation to the County,” he said.
Neither has the Hospital notified the state Public Regulatory Commission, Commission Spokesman Paul Carbajal said.
“They should let us know if there’s going to be a cutback in service in a proposal or written statement,” Carbajal said. “Usually we have staff look into what outcome will be for public safety. If there is no impact on public safety, they don’t need to contact us.”
The cuts will force the city and County to respond to more calls, Española Fire Chief John Kitchen and County Emergency Medical Services Director Mateo DeVargas said.
“Now the hospital will use one of their two (remaining) ambulances for transports (to Santa Fe and Albuquerque),” Kitchen said, referring to the Hospital’s practice of transporting patients to other hospitals. “That’s a four-hour trip. If the other (ambulance) is in the boondocks and we get a serious call — or more than one call — here in town, (the Española Fire Department is) going to be doing calls. I absolutely do not want the city to go into the (ambulance) business.”
The city and County have fewer paramedics than the Hospital, Kitchen noted.
“We have no paramedics,” Kitchen said.
The County will also be strained by the hospital’s cuts, DeVargas said.
“We’ll be busier. We’ll have to start doing rendezvous with them,” DeVargas said, meaning that County emergency vehicles will have to transport patients part of the way to Española and meet hospital ambulances en route as they become available.
2,2000 Miles
The hospital currently operates only three of its six ambulances, keeping the other three as backups. One of the three currently operating ambulances will be taken out of operation March 8, Mauldin said.
That will leave only two ambulances on duty to cover almost all of Rio Arriba County, Mauldin said.
“We have an extremely large response area — 2,200 square miles with three units,” he said. “Monday that will go to two. We don’t cover Tierra Amarilla but we go out to Gallina and Ojo Sarco. Just now, we sent a crew to Gallina and another to the other end of the county (north of Ojo Caliente). Multiple calls are not rare.”
Hospital ambulance call logs indicate that even with three ambulances operating, multiple simultaneous calls caused response delays four times between Feb. 25 and March 3. Two emergency response calls were delayed in that one-week period and two calls to transfer patients from the Hospital to St. Vincents Hospital in Santa Fe were delayed.
The cuts amount to a 20 percent pay cut for the Hospital’s full-time paramedics, and many ambulance service employees are now actively looking for other jobs, employees said. For several years, the Hospital has enjoyed some of the lowest paramedic staff turnover rates in the state, Mauldin said.
Yu is not worried that paramedics will leave the hospital.
“I would think these days, many would be glad to have a job,” Yu said.
Paramedics refused to comment for this story because they feared losing their jobs.
The print version of this story titled, “Hospital Cuts Ambulance,” that appeared on page A3 of the March 5 issue requires a clarification.
Española Fire Chief John Kitchen is quoted in the story as saying, “We have advanced life support equipment like defibrillators on our rig, but we’re not authorized to use (it).”
Kitchen subsequently clarified that the Española Fire Department does have authorization to use defibrillators.
“We don’t carry Advanced Life Support drugs because we’re not authorized to (use them),” Kitchen clarified. “But we do have defibrillators and our first responders are trained (and authorized) to use them.”