Delaware General Assembly

Signed 9/24/14

The General Assembly has ended, the current status is the final status.

4/30/14

Ennis

Sen. Townsend
Reps. Carson, M. Smith

Sen. Sokola, Poore
Reps. Atkins, Baumbach, Gray, Heffernan, Jaques, J. Johnson, Q. Johnson, Kenton, Longhurst, Outten, Paradee, B. Short, D. Short, D.E. Williams, Wilson, Spiegelman

AN ACT TO AMEND TITLE 18 OF THE DELAWARE CODE RELATING TO THE REQUIRED COVERAGE FOR VOLUNTEER AMBULANCE COMPANY SERVICES.

In 1999, House Bill 332 established new response time goals and certification standards for the delivery of basic life support and emergency medical services. In order to meet the new standards, volunteer ambulance companies needed to hire paid EMTs and ambulance attendants to ensure the availability of sufficient numbers of trained, certified staff on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis to meet the new response time goals. The authors of House Bill 332 recognized that compliance with the new goals and standards would impose additional expense on the volunteer ambulance companies, however, neither House Bill 332 nor any subsequent legislation has addressed the funding sources for basic life support ambulance service in Delaware. Increased costs, without corresponding increases in revenue, have eroded the financial stability of volunteer ambulance companies. In 2012, 40 of Delaware’s 55 volunteer ambulance companies reported they are now conducting ambulance/EMS operations at a loss. In 2013, House Bill 215 established the Ambulance and EMS Task Force (“Task Force”). In February 2014, the Task Force issued its report on the state of funding of ambulance and EMS services in Delaware and noted, “By some accounts, the public may begin to see diminished ambulance service in as little as 8 to 12 months, if steps are not taken promptly to meet the funding need.” The Task Force made 9 findings and 13 recommendations aimed at addressing this issue. This bill would implement one of the Task Force’s recommendations to improve the funding of basic life support ambulance services in Delaware by ensuring that health insurers, health service corporations, health maintenance organizations, or managed care organizations do not set their allowable charges below the costs incurred by the volunteer ambulance companies in providing an ambulance run and basic life support services.

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

View HTML View PDF