Is Ambulance Service Essential? Proposal Seeks Funding For EMS

While you may hope calling 9-1-1 will result in an ambulance arriving at your door, in Wyoming, getting help from an Emergency Services agency is not a given.

This interim, a bill stalled in the Labor, Health, and Social Services Committee of the Wyoming Legislature that would have made EMS an “essential service,” and triggered efforts to properly fund ambulance service in the state. Opponents from the Far Right said they did not believe ambulance service is an essential service.

“When someone picks up the phone during an emergency there is an expectation that there is someone on the other end who can help,” says AARP Wyoming State Director Sam Shumway. “We think this conversation about EMS and how we pay for it is as important as any that will be had inside the Capitol in 2024.”

Funding ambulance service in Wyoming is a patchwork system that changes depending on where you live. Currently, most residents in Wyoming don’t actually pay taxes that go towards ambulance service. Some counties will pay for EMS services, as well as a surcharge on cellphone and landlines of $.75 per month to pay for 9-1-1 dispatch centers. Some areas have benefactors or local fundraisers that result in little to no need for reimbursement. Larger communities have paid EMS.

In Wyoming there are around 1,300 who are EMS licensed, 75% of those are paid. There are 43 ground-based ambulance services and 13 more that are hospital-based services. If Wyoming went to an EMS model in which all EMS workers in the state were paid, it would cost approximately $91 million per year, according to the Wyoming Department of Health. The Governor’s Office reports that 53% of all ambulance runs are paid for by Medicare at a rate that does not cover the overhead involved. If a patient has an ambulance arrive at their home, business, or place of accident and a patient is not transported to a hospital, there is no reimbursement. Meanwhile, in smaller communities where the ambulance service relies on volunteer paramedics and EMTs, there are fewer trained workers willing to join the volunteer ranks. All this has led to 16 Wyoming Ambulance Services having either closed doors or consolidated in the last 10 years. Meanwhile, the state’s EMS leaders suggest Wyoming is about 200 EMS workers short of what it should have to cover. This fall, the Governor’s Office proposed some changes to the funding and service model that will be considered during the 2024 Legislative Session. Under Governor Mark Gordon’s plan, the state would appropriate $5 million to help counties and communities to look into coordinating conversations among local areas to develop funding plans that increase efficiency and help funding go further.

The plan would offer up to 10 local support grants to areas to hire a coordinator to assist with coordination and collaboration for local operations and utilize the recently-passed EMS special district legislation. This law allows for local areas to draw up their own borders and tax itself specifically for the funding of EMS services.

The hope is these plans will help the state and the area voters to fully understand the cost of operating ambulance services and where the funding gaps truly lie. These grants would be funded in the neighborhood of $300,000 for two years.

Once a plan is set for funding and service area, or consolidation, that area will be allowed to apply for the remaining$5 million in state funds to be used for implementation of the plan.