CITY OF NEWBURGH – Newburgh’s administration wants to pursue a state-issued “certificate of need” in the city’s name so it can explore options for ambulance service besides Mobile Life Support Services, whose contract expires next year.

A resolution before the City Council would allow Newburgh to apply to the state Department of Health for the CON, which is basically permission to operate that is issued after a process determining there is a public need for a particular service.

Mobile Life currently holds a CON for ambulance service in Newburgh, and its ambulance crews also transport patients in other local municipalities.

Volunteer and private ambulance companies are “struggling,” Assistant Fire Chief Bill Horton told the City Council on Thursday. Last Saturday a New Windsor ambulance crew had to respond to ambulance calls in the city, he said.

“We might be in a place where soon the state declares EMS as an essential service and there will be requirements put on the municipalities to make sure ambulances are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Horton said. “Right now we can’t always say that.”

Historically, ambulance companies like Mobile Life have applied to their local EMS councils for authority to operate within a certain municipality. A change in state law in 1996 allowed municipalities to apply for their own certificate of need in order to operate in-house ambulance services.

That is one of the options Newburgh would like to explore, but cannot without getting its own CON, City Manager Michael Ciarvino said.

“It doesn’t matter what we may be considering and what options we may be pursuing – whether it’s redoing this contract or considering other ambulance providers or even doing ambulance service in-house with our own fire department,” he said. “It does not matter unless we have a certificate of need.”

Newburgh’s Council approved a new two-year contract with Mobile Life on April 27, 2015. It was the latest in a series of two-year contracts with the company.

Mobile Life receives no money from its contract with Newburgh. It instead gets revenue from patients, Medicaid, Medicare and private insurance companies.

With an eye toward that revenue, former Newburgh Fire Chief Michael Vatter proposed in 2010 that Newburgh consider letting the fire department provide ambulance services instead of cutting the department’s budget.

Vatter estimated that the change could bring the city $130,000 to $160,000 in revenue the first year after the purchase of two ambulances and the hiring of four paramedics. If the city could find grants to cover the ambulances, first-year revenue could be about $400,000, Vatter said at the time.

Taking over the city’s ambulance service is one option. But even if Newburgh stayed with a private company, having a CON gives it the power it does not currently have to dictate the level of services, Horton said.

Declining levels of care and longer wait times were two of the problems cited in a report issued by a task force created to study EMS service in Dutchess County.

Issued in March, the report cited a number of challenges, including difficulties volunteer services faced recruiting personnel and struggles by private companies that face rising expenses in the face of flat insurance reimbursements.

“People have come to expect that EMS and ambulances are going to show up at your door at moments when you’re having the worst time in your life and you need help,” Horton said. “You don’t know how long you’re going to wait for.”

lsparks@th-record.com