Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 17, 1990 TAG: 9004170530
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: JOEL TURNER MUNICIPAL WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The city has fire stations on Bennington Street Southeast and Aerial Way Drive Southwest, so firefighters with emergency medical training could respond quickly in these neighborhoods, City Manager Robert Herbert said Monday.
Herbert said the city plans to establish a "first-responder" program in the stations so that medically trained firefighters can respond first to emergency calls.
The firefighters, who are to be trained as emergency medical technicians, can provide basic life-support services until more highly trained rescue workers arrive, he said.
This will be the first time the city has used firefighters to answer emergency calls. Currently, the city has a combined system of paid emergency rescue workers and volunteers.
The city plans to recruit 24 firefighters for the emergency medical training. As an incentive, the city would provide a $100 monthly stipend for participating firefighters. It also will pay for the emergency equipment and the required inoculations for firefighters.
Some emergency calls in the U.S. 460 east corridor - which was annexed in 1976 - also are not being answered within the 8-minute standard, Herbert said. The city plans to build a new fire station in this area and use firefighters to respond to emergency calls, similar to the program for Garden City and Deyerle Road when the station opens, he said.
Herbert said the station in the U.S. 460 corridor should be open by October 1991. He has recommended $14,400 in the the proposed 1990-91 budget so the city can hire 12 firefighters for the station by June 1991. Only one month of salaries for the firefighters will have to be paid from the upcoming budget.
He has recommended that council allocate an additional $164,000 in the next fiscal year to establish the first-responder programs at stations serving Garden City and Deyerle Road and to pay for other improvements in the emergency medical system.
This includes overtime pay for the city's paid emergency rescue staff, equipment and operating costs for Roanoke Emergency Medical Services Inc., the management agency for the city's volunteer rescue workers.
To finance the improvements, Herbert recommends that the city begin billing city residents for the portion of the cost of emergency calls that is not paid by insurance companies. The city began billing insurance companies this fiscal year for calls and expects to collect about $216,000. He said the city can expect to collect an additional $164,000 per year if it bills patients for the balance.
City officials said several factors would determine the amount that patients would have to pay for emergency calls: insurance coverage, policy deductibles and ability to pay. They said the ability to pay would be determined on a case-by-case basis and adjustments could be made to individual bills.
by CNB