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If the County Commission agrees, EMTs' starting pay would be $21,715 a year, and paramedics' $27,913 - including scheduled overtime for both.
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 6, 2001
LECANTO -- Citing the need to put its salaries on par with neighboring counties, Nature Coast Emergency Medical Services' board of directors approved a plan Wednesday to boost its wages over the next two years.
The plan still needs the County Commission's approval at budget hearings later this month, because it relies in part on $30,000 from county coffers next year.
The proposal would raise the entry level pay for emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, from $5.88 to $6.53 an hour. Paramedics would see their starting pay rise from $8.18 to $8.39 an hour.
Including scheduled overtime, the starting pay would amount to $21,715 a year for EMTs and $27,913 for paramedics.
"That will bring us up to a point where what our employees are paid is comparable to what other systems pay their employees," Nature Coast's board president Bob Blume said.
Since taking over the ambulance system in October 2000, Nature Coast has lost nine EMTs and eight paramedics, mostly to better-paying jobs.
Some have gone to neighboring ambulance systems or other health care providers. One EMT found he could make a better living driving a delivery truck.
Officials hope to halt the exodus by improving the wages and offering other perks. For example, the Nature Coast board also decided Wednesday not to raise employees' health insurance payments next year, even though insurance costs are rising 17 percent.
Nature Coast will absorb the extra insurance costs next year, although board members said ambulance employees would probably see increases in following years as health care costs continue to soar.
"Even if they are making 10 cents an hour more (in another ambulance system), there's other rewards here to consider," Nature Coast executive director Teresa Gorentz said.
She originally drafted a raise proposal that would have cost $117,250 in one year, divided between Nature Coast and Citrus County. She revamped that proposal after meeting with county officials, spreading the raises over two years.
The first year will bring the starting pay for EMTs and paramedics up to a more competitive minimum, with modest raises for other workers. The second year would provide more raises to employees above the starting pay.
The raise proposal will cost $58,118 in the first year and up to $58,000 the following year.
Nature Coast would pay for the first-year raises using $25,000 in leftover revenues from this year and $3,118 from the next budget year, which starts Oct. 1. The proposal also calls for an additional $30,000 from Citrus County.
The County Commission last year created Nature Coast Emergency Medical Services, a non-profit company, to run the ambulance system after Florida Regional EMS pulled out of Citrus County. Commissioners hope Nature Coast will eventually become self-sufficient, like a similar ambulance system in Volusia County, but they expect to help fund the system in the early years.
Under the proposed budgets for next year, the county would contribute $784,912 toward the ambulance system's $3.6-million budget.
Nature Coast hopes to decrease the county's contributions in future years by adjusting its fees.
The board proposes to charge an hourly fee for providing medics at special events that previously have been provided at no cost. Event organizers would pay $60 an hour to have an ambulance stationed at the event, or between $15 and $35 an hour for an EMT or paramedic.
Nature Coast board members also propose raising the emergency transport fees from $300 to $330 for basic life support, and from $430 to $473 for advanced life support. The change would affect private insurance and self-pay patients, not those with Medicare or Medicaid.
The proposed fees await County Commission approval.
"We're a company in our first year," said board member Don McKenna. "It's a balancing act."