A new report from an emergency medical service (EMS) organization warns that there is a burgeoning nationwide shortage of staff that is likely going to imperil Americans if trends continue.
“This has been a problem that has been developing over several years because of chronic underfunding shortfalls from Congress for ambulance services, but certainly during the pandemic, things have hit a crisis level,” said American Ambulance Association President Shawn Baird in an Oct. 10 interview with Fox News.
In recent months, “we’ve seen a tremendous amount of workforce attrition and schools had shut down paramedic training institutions and stopped graduating new students for the last year, so we’re suddenly in a severe shortfall,” Baird added.
In recent weeks, his group sent a letter to leaders in the House and Senate warning that the country's EMS system is "facing a crippling workforce shortage," adding that it's a "long-term problem that has been building for more than a decade." The letter also warned that the labor shortage is going to undermine the 9-1-1 emergency response system and as such deserves attention from Congress.
The group's 2019 Ambulance Industry Employee Turnover Study found that the turnover rate for EMTs and more highly trained paramedics was 20-30 percent, but Baird said that number has grown since the COVID-19 pandemic began last year.
“The magnitude has really blown up over the last few months,” Baird told NBC News on Oct 8. “When you take a system that was already fragile and stretched it because you didn’t have enough people entering the field, then you throw a public health emergency and all of the additional burdens that it put on our workforce, as well as the labor shortages across the entire economy, and it really has put us in a crisis mode.”
And of course, the COVID vaccine mandate is also leading many ambulance and fire personnel out of the industry altogether.
Julie Keizer, the town manager of Waldoboro, Maine, told a local newscast that “the vaccine mandate has contributed to the loss of first responders.”
“I think part of the problem is everybody thought [workers] would conform because nobody wants to lose their jobs,” Keizer said. “But when you look at the rate of pay for emergency workers, they can make more delivering packages than patients.”
Deborah Clapp, executive director of Western Mass Medical Services in Massachusetts, said in an interview with local media in her area that overworked ambulance crews coupled with low wages are creating staffing shortages throughout the country.
“What happens if there’s a disaster of some sort? And a disaster doesn’t need to be very big in western Massachusetts,” she told Fox6. “We need all these logistics to be able to step into place and handle these events and, meanwhile, 911 is still being called for the heart attack, the baby being born, the car crash. … We have one trauma center in western Massachusetts. One level one trauma center.”
“It’s almost unmanageable,” noted Ken Cummings, chief of the Tri-Hospital EMS in Port Huron, Michigan. “I don’t think any EMS provider wants to go out in public and say that your service might be interrupted, but the reality is that because of the extremely low workforce situation right now, we are going to start to see delays. We’re already seeing that throughout the country right now.”
His service has more than 1,000 openings.
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