NYS Ambulance services at stake
Credit: WKTV
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Industry could face a collapse if government officials do not provide sufficient funding and support.
News channel2's chelsea sherrod is live in studiowith your top story tonight.
Good evening chelsea good evening jason, new york - one of the hardest hit states over the course of this pandemic - is pushing emergency medical service providers to the limit.
-- there isn't a more urgent time than now for these services to be available in its full capacity.
(nats( vinny faraone: primarily a cut our volume down by 30%, 30 to 40% it's starting to come back now but may was horrible.
May and june were just horrible all of our volume was down about 35 to 40% below are normal and that was for a lot of reasons people were afraid and justifiably so we didn't understand this disease.
Thousands of dollars are spent on personal protective equipment alone at kunkel ambulance.
If federal and state officials are unable to come up with further funding, the industry will struggle to remain viable.
Vinny faraone: the other thing that's infected is considerably is the cost of the ppe i have, my office looks like a warehouse, i have it start with ppe that we were able to get from different places in the country.
Vinny faraone nats: this is this goes over we put this over a surface areas like our phones and you have to keep it there for about five seconds in each position we do our keyboards and stuff daily we do that.
Actually we have these respirators that or pepper or positive air pressure respirators.
Vinny faraone: so we have enough for our people right now you know but i don't know how long this is going to last but presently we have enough for our present situation.
A combination of insufficient funding from medicare and a rise in demand for ambulances is what the industry is the cause of its decline.
Vinny faraone: things like medicaid increases across the state would help.
Medicare increases would help.
More ppe from the government would help.
Again the big elephant in the room and what's gonna happen next month you know what's going to happen next week?
Is our volume going to go down or are we going to be cut 1/3 again?
That's the big unknown.
Initial funding under the provider relief fund totaled 350 million dollars for e-m-s providers in contrast to 11 billion dollars for rural hospitals.
Jason.
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