As the August primary election approaches, small towns and large cities across Michigan are seeing millages being pushed to support libraries, school districts, and local police.
Local Emergency Medical Services (EMS) departments are also renewing or creating millage proposals that will help them continue operating. Currently 16 counties in Michigan have an ambulance or EMS millage on their ballots this year, including the Northeast Michigan counties of Alpena, Montmorency, and Presque Isle.
Currently, EMS is recognized as an essential service in 13 states, meaning those states consider it a basic public need alongside police, firefighters, and hospitals. Michigan is not one of these states.
According to the Michigan Journal of Economics, EMS services are said to be a “victim of underfunding,” as it struggles with securing funding and reimbursement for treatment and transportation.
Justin Rogers is the director and education coordinator for the Ogemaw County EMS Authority operating in West Branch. The county is one of many proposing a new millage to support their ambulance services, with the maximum goal of 0.5 mills, which would cost the owner of a $100,000 house about $25 per year.
Rogers said securing funding and insufficient reimbursement is a struggle his department faces regularly.
“The reimbursement by Medicare and Medicaid, which is our largest reimburser, has not kept up with that rising cost of EMS equipment, ambulances, medical supplies, and different devices that we need to do our jobs,” Rogers said. “In order to maintain those pieces of equipment and to be able to update them and replace them, we’re having to seek out some alternate avenues.”
The West Branch location is the only EMS service in Ogemaw County, with its closest neighbor being roughly 30 minutes away in Denton Township. While the town does have its own hospital, Rogers said there are instances their ambulances have had to take patients as far as Grand Rapids or Detroit.
This is a common issue among rural Michigan EMS services according to the Michigan Association for Ambulance Services (MAAS). The association said the state’s geography, limited access to public transportation, long travel time, and road conditions are all barriers to rural health care.
MAAS has also spoken out publicly on state underfunding and budget issues for EMS services.
“EMS is life or death work that must continue,” Angela Madden, executive director of the association, wrote in a statement. “Michigan’s hardworking paramedics and EMTs deserve to be properly paid for their work. It is beyond frustrating to see pet projects funded when EMS is being left in the dust.”
Rogers said if the millage is approved by voters, the funds would be used to improve medical equipment. He said a new ambulance would be ideal, but they are also looking at purchasing new stretchers and cardiac monitors.
“The serviceable life on a lot of our equipment is per the manufacturer seven years,” he said. “Much of the equipment that we have is getting close to that time frame or even beyond that time frame by quite a bit. Those pieces of equipment are at a point where the replacement cost versus the cost of maintaining … It’s more beneficial to replace (those items).”
