A small Hancock County town is expanding its EMS to provide residents with coverage 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Gouldsboro residents voted Thursday night to approve a supplemental budget that allows the town to expand its EMS coverage, Town Manager Joshua McIntyre said.
About 70% of the 122 registered voters approved the nearly $265,000 bump, which means EMS on the Schoodic Peninsula will move to 24/7 coverage through two-person crews, McIntyre said. Winter Harbor is also covered by that EMS and will need to approve a roughly $42,000 jump.
Gouldsboro is one of the few small Maine towns expanding its EMS services. Most are grappling with continually rising costs for running their own service, or simply have ceased funding their own department and contract with neighboring EMS providers instead.
Before the vote, the town shared with residents a Bangor Daily News investigation that found rural EMS is at the brink of collapse and residents are at risk of an ambulance not arriving when one is needed. Gouldsboro also shared a BDN report on Dennys River Volunteer Ambulance closing in Down East Maine as its 80 year old owners retire, as well as a copy of a 2023 report about the cost of rural health from the University of Southern Maine.
The overall budget will come in around $900,000 with the expanded hours. The area has about 450 calls a year, but there is no way to predict what time of day those calls will happen, McIntyre said.
“There was a lot of consideration that went into this, and it’s not done lightly, and it’s not done without the realization that this is a significant chunk of the budget and the burden on the taxpayers of Gouldsboro and then Winter Harbor,” McIntyre said.
There have been times where Gouldsboro hasn’t been able to respond to calls and relied on other services to help. That is always uncertain and part of what prompted the town to expand its EMS.
When an EMS call comes in overnight, first responders are at home and must go to the station to pick up the ambulance and then go to the call, McIntyre said. Some of the night shift workers left the service over the summer, he said.
“It just put a lot of stress on the system, which was one of the primary motivators to try to increase the budget in order to be able to hire former full-time employees and ensure paid hourly coverage around the clock,” McIntyre said.
There is an open EMT position, which Gouldsboro will fill before it starts hiring the additional staff, McIntyre said. The town also needs to hire a permanent EMS director. The interim has split his time between EMS and the fire department, which has been a lot of work, he said.
“Now we’ve got to get the hard work of getting things in place,” McIntyre said.