Fire Department ends role, citing many factors
MELROSE — Melrose Fire Chief John White and Mayor Jen Grigoraitis announced this week that the City of Melrose intends to enter an agreement to replace the city’s current primary ambulance service with Arlington-based Armstrong Ambulance. Armstrong currently provides emergency medical services (EMS) to Medford, Arlington, Waltham, and Melrose neighbors Saugus and Stoneham.
Earlier this year, Melrose Fire began exploring alternatives to the department’s in-house ambulance service. In recent years, the department has often struggled to fill ambulance shifts, leading to ballooning overtime costs and an increase in the use of forced overtime holdovers to staff its ambulance. In several instances in the past few years, the Melrose ambulance has been taken out of service because of insufficient staffing in the department, meaning that the city was forced to rely instead on its backup ambulance provider for any EMS response.
Chief White and city officials determined that the city could shift to a third-party EMS provider, at no cost to the city, while ensuring that Melrose would continue to be served by high-quality ambulance services while improving reliability and consistency in its responses. As the primary EMS provider to Melrose, Armstrong Ambulance will maintain at least one dedicated ALS ambulance stationed at Melrose Fire Headquarters available on a 24-hour, 7 day a week basis, and will ensure continuous coverage in Melrose when the primary ambulance is dispatched on a call. Daily response data provided to the city by Armstrong will allow for consistent oversight of all calls and performance.
“Contracting with Armstrong Ambulance relieves the pressure of additional shifts on our firefighter-paramedics and secures consistent EMS coverage for our community,” said the fire chief. “Armstrong comes highly recommended by many of my fellow fire chiefs, and I believe that they will bring a patient-centered approach and high degree of professionalism to Melrose.”
Armstrong Ambulance, based in Arlington, boasts a unionized ambulance workforce and a number of modern EMS amenities and capabilities, including new ambulances, free training and certification for fire department staff, real-time GPS tracking for ambulances, and a demonstrated capacity to collaborate with multi-community emergency response and other first response needs. Given that Armstrong has been operating in Melrose as the primary hospital provider (Melrose-Wakefield and Winchester Hospitals), they know the area, traffic patterns and the surrounding cities and towns well, and are in an ideal position to provide a quick and skilled level of care to Melrose residents.
“As anyone who has ever needed an ambulance can tell you, fast response times make all the difference,” said Mayor Grigoraitis. “In light of the city’s budget limitations and challenges in filling ambulance shifts and overtime, shifting to a contract which will ensure 24-7-365 ambulance coverage is the right move.”
Chief White has been in discussions with Melrose firefighters to ensure any impacts related to this decision to shift to third-party EMS are addressed. The city is looking to begin the new EMS service before the busy summer months, when filling ambulance shifts has become increasingly more difficult in the past few years. White and Grigoraitis have also begun conversations with the Public Safety Facilities project team to evaluate any possible impacts on the fire station renovation and rebuild projects currently under development.