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Ems Fuel Costs

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Running head: FUEL COSTS EFFECTING EMS

How Rising Fuel Cost Effect EMS Agencies

Eric Hatcher

EMS 280

6 May 08

How Rising Fuel Cost Effect EMS Agencies

As the prices of fuel increase nationwide, it isn’t only the local residents that feel the pinch of higher fuel prices. Those responsible for fueling ambulances, fire engines, and police cars are also battling the soaring transportation costs.

Granted, this problem affects everyone in the EMS industry, but it is even worse on privately owned squads. Most, if not all of the county or state funded agencies have a budget allotment for fuel costs, and that amount is usually replenished by tax dollars …show more content…

So if one of these departments expands beyond its annual fuel budget, it must get the money from different departments. This could come from training, maintenance, payroll or other budget accounts.

Most, if not all of EMS agencies nationwide are already running short to under-staffed, and these higher prices mean that they have to run more calls to bring in more revenue for the company they work for.

As with employee cutbacks, from a financial point, terminating a two person crew may save the employer money by being able to recoup the payroll of those two employees, but the other crews would have to “take up the slack” left by the cut and will now have to run the same amount of calls they were before the crew cut, but now they are running with one less ambulance. So the remaining units would have to use more fuel and log more mileage to fill the gap left by the other crew.

In one example of a companies attempt to save fuel by decreasing unit idle times, an ambulance service has three specialty care units which are Ford E350 Type 3 Mini-Mod ambulances equipped with refrigeration units. These units carried certain medications that required constant refrigeration. The service contacted the pharmaceutical companies for each medication and inquired about the shelf life of the medications without refrigeration, and the possibility of carrying the same medications, but in a form that didn’t require

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