By ALEX COSTELLO
The village's pilot program with North Shore ran for six months, from Dec. 1 to May 31. In that time, North Shore responded to 465 calls and transported 358 of those calls to hospitals. The service's average response time was 3.3 minutes, well below the four minutes that was originally estimated. Because of North Shore's performance, the village signed a new, year-long contract with the company in May for continued services during 2009 into 2010.
"We weren't sure exactly what the number [of transports] was going to be going into the program, because we compiled data from several different sources, so we were right in the middle of where we estimated to be," said Alan Schwalberg, director of operations for North Shore's Center for Emergency Medical Services, which runs the ambulance program. "I think it was a good number for both the village and for us."
The low response time was not only beneficial for those placing calls for ambulances, but also for North Shore itself. There was a stipulation in the original contract that if North Shore didn't respond to a call quickly enough - a little over 4.5 minutes - it would have to pay Rockville Centre.
"No where else is this being done in this area that I know of," Schwalberg said. "It is being done in other parts of the country, but they really set the trend in Rockville Centre. The village really did a terrific job."
The village, especially the Rockville Centre Fire Department, says it's happy with the job being done by North Shore.
"In the chiefs' eyes, we absolutely love it," said fire department chief Mark Murray. "We know an ambulance is getting out. The average response time was 3.3 minutes. You're not going to get that any place else in the volunteer system."
One of the original reasons the village contracted with North Shore was to lift a heavy burden from the fire department's EMTs, volunteers who had been running two ambulances 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We were running over 1,800 aided cases a year," Murray said. "We had pretty much the same people during the day time, and one guy was an accountant, so from January to mid-April, he wasn't able to take leave from his work."
The six-month pilot program cost the village $56,250. The pricing was based on a sliding scale-the more calls that North Shore answered, the less the village had to pay. In fact, if North Shore answered more than 485 calls, the village wouldn't have had to pay anything. This is because, according to Village Administrator Frank Quigley, North Shore would have recouped their costs through insurance payments. If North Shore had received too few calls-fewer than 350-the village would have been charged over $83,000.
Under the new contract, which is twice as long as the original pilot program, the village is expecting to pay $94,500, based on the number of calls North Shore answered in the six-month period that just ended. If North Shore responds to over 970 calls, the "magic number" in the new contract, the village would pay nothing.
"[The price] wasn't as high as it could have been," said Quigley. "It's more economical than we thought it might be."
Comments about this story? ACostello@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
