Rural EMS aid set at $24M, but providers still wait for funding fix

TOWER — Gov. Tim Walz signed a bill into law to address some of the challenges faced by rural ambulance services, but emergency responders say a bigger investment is needed to sustain the struggling industry.

The bill signed Thursday, May 23, includes $24 million in one-time aid along with other provisions intended to improve the system. But that amount is nearly $100 million shy of the need, according to the state’s Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board.

Dena Suihkonen, an emergency medical technician and the director of the Tower Area Ambulance Service, said EMS providers are disappointed by the amount and still waiting for a permanent funding solution.

“One of the things that I keep hearing over and over is that this is just the beginning. They’re not done,” she said. “And that’s what I’m going to hold them to. To me, it was kind of sad, just like to every other EMS provider. Because they set it so high and then they dropped it very low.”

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It’s difficult to define why rural EMS is bleeding money, largely because there are so many issues to overcome. At community meetings with legislators — including state Legislature EMS Task Force field hearings earlier this year — providers detailed the many challenges they face.

Federal reimbursement rates don’t cover the cost of service. Staffing shortages are abundant for a multitude of reasons. Operating costs are increasing. And it's all occurring within an outdated regulatory and funding system.

How much state aid rural EMS would receive was up in the air for nearly all of the legislative session. DFL state Sen. Grant Hauschild of Hermantown, who represents Northeastern Minnesota, introduced a bill to provide $120 million in emergency aid earlier in the session. The governor’s proposed budget would have provided $16 million.

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The final amount was somewhere in the vast in-between. A last-minute amendment in the final days of the session from Hauschild to another EMS-related bill set the aid amount at $24 million.

In an interview earlier this month, Hauschild detailed the many legislative angles to help EMS.

“We’re trying some innovations, we’re doing some regulatory reforms, we’re providing emergency aid and we’re trying to train the future workforce,” Hauschild said. “We have to look at it holistically, otherwise we’re not really going to tackle this issue.”

One of the ways the Legislature addressed training was a $100,000 grant Hauschild introduced, which will help Lake County Ambulance Service establish an EMT training program for Arrowhead high school students.

That grant was included in the omnibus jobs and economic development bill. The legislation that includes the emergency aid also changed the EMS Regulatory Board to the Office of Emergency Medical Services, which legislators said will allow for more accountability to the governor and Legislature, beginning next year.

The law also modifies some staffing requirements and sets aside $6 million to establish a pilot alternative care program, which will be implemented as soon as possible in St. Louis County and Otter Tail or Grant counties.

The pilot program will establish “sprint medics,” which are paramedics in SUVs who can respond to calls before full ambulance rigs. This may allow for quicker response times and better allocation of resources, according to supporters. The program will last two years.

Suihkonen said there are still lots of unknowns with the sprint system, though she’ll begin getting more information in meetings this week. She thinks the program will end up being morphed to fit the EMS landscape of northeastern Minnesota.

How the program will be staffed is one area of concern.

“I still don’t know where they’re going to get the medics from, and that makes me a little nervous,” she said. “There just are not a lot of paramedics out there.”

She said she hopes the program will help with intercepts, or when an advanced life support ambulance meets a basic life support ambulance.

“Because right now if we get a Virginia or an Ely or a Hoyt Lakes intercept, their whole rig is coming up,” she said. “Now two ambulances are out of service instead of just one.”

As for the emergency aid, Suihkonen said it will at least help in the short term.

“Everybody’s been running very lean, and this will now give people the ability to maybe update some equipment or get their supplies more, those types of things, maybe have a good training session,” she said. “Something that’s been put on the back burner.”