Communities spar over EMS payments
Cairo, Greenville agree on one thing: Problems are ‘ludicrous’
The Daily Mail
July 23, 2009

GREENVILLE — Cairo Ambulance Chief Reay Mahler said the Greenville Rescue Squad owes the Town of Cairo roughly $16,000 for calls covered in Greenville for patients who do not pay, or do not have an insurance company pay, the Town of Cairo Ambulance.

But Greenville Rescue Squad’s attorney Bradley Pinsky disagrees.

“We owe the town not a dime,” he said.

Pinsky, of Scicchitano and Pinsky, PLLC, said that Cairo’s bid to recover the money was “ridiculous.”

“What we will never do is pay any money to another ambulance service when we had no part in providing care,” he said. “We are just not going to do that.”

Pinsky said he has asked Cairo Town Supervisor John Coyne to provide him with a list of the call for which Cairo demands payment.

Mahler said he had sent updated information to the Greenville Rescue Squad four times, but Pinsky said he has received nothing from Cairo.

Without the lists, Pinsky said, he could not determine whether patients had mistakenly sent some of the money Cairo requested to the Greenville Rescue Squad instead of to the Cairo Ambulance.

Pinsky said Coyne had indicated during a special meeting to discuss the issue that a new mutual aid contract Pinsky had drafted was acceptable.

The agreement was rejected last week by the Town Board upon the recommendation of Cairo Town Attorney Tal Rappleyea.

The Town Board also passed a resolution to notify the Greenville Rescue Squad that it would terminate a mutual aid agreement at the end of August if the money is not paid.

Malher said that Cairo Ambulance will still respond to mass casualty call in Greenville or if other services are unable to cover a call even if the mutual aid agreement is terminated.

Cairo will only not cover regular calls to which the Greenville Rescue Squad cannot respond due to insufficient manpower, he said.

Pinsky said the town’s threat showed its greed.

He maintained that the payments were not the squad’s responsibility.

“The Greenville Rescue Squad has no obligation whatsoever to serve as an insurance company for a patient without insurance,” he said.

But Mahler said the squad does need to finance emergency medical services in Greenville.

“We understand that they are not an insurance company but Greenville Rescue Squad, because of its Certificate of Need, is responsible for the Town of Greenville residents’ EMS,” he said.

However, Pinsky said that proposition was “ludicrous” and the certificate does not obligate the squad to pay for calls it could not cover.

Malher said Cairo Ambulance has been paid for the majority of the calls it has covered in Greenville and a small but growing number of patients have not paid Cairo Ambulance for its service.

And in those cases, he said, Cairo foots the bill for patients in Greenville.

Mahler said other ambulance services in the area, such as Durham’s service, face the same problem Greenville sometimes has with manning an ambulance at certain times of the day. Cairo, and other mutual aid services, respond to their calls, he said.

He said other communities recognize that they have a responsibility to pay Cairo when patients in their communities do not, or cannot, make the payments themselves.

“That the taxpayers in Cairo are paying for the Town of Cairo Ambulance to go into the Town of Greenville to cover the slack because their agency is not doing it is ludicrous,” he said.

The problem with Greenville has been ongoing for two years and Cairo has never received a payment, he said.

Malher said he and Coyne had met with representatives from the squad and the Town of Greenville to work out an aid agreement and a payment schedule. He said initially the agreement was going to expire April 1, 2009, but the deadline was extended to allow the rescue to pay some of the debt.

“We have been very fair,” he said. “But we cannot continue to provide this service for nothing.”