Members of the emergency services subcommittee aired complaints against Gold Cross Ambulance service and inquired about cutting the supplemental funding to the company. City attorney Wayne Brown clarified that the city is contractually bound but not legally required to pay Gold Cross to operate.
Currently, Gold Cross receives roughly $650,000 in subsidies each year meant to cover the cost of indigent care.
District 2 Commissioner Dennis Williams and District 5 Commissioner Bobby Williams complained about slow ambulance response times, claiming that people were having to wait 45 minutes to an hour for EMTs to arrive, although they offered no data to back up the claims.
MORE: Augusta Commissioners Continue To Target Gold Cross EMS
District 10 Commissioner John Clarke reminded the committee that slow response times are rare and that it usually was because the hospital involved was facing a backlog.
“The ambulance has to wait until the hospital accepts the patient and then they have to clean and sanitize the vehicle and change the linens on the gurney before they can respond to another call,” Clarke said.
Clarke’s comments led District 4 Commissioner Sammie Sias to ask why the ambulance couldn’t just drop the patient off at the door and move on.
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Augusta Deputy Fire Chief Shaw Williams responded to Sias by saying that legally the patient had to remain in the custody of the EMTs until custody is transferred to the hospital, and it was not legal to just wheel someone into the emergency room and leave them.
The city EMT service operates one ambulance that is used as an overflow vehicle when requested by Gold Cross during peak times. Although the city bills the patient directly when the city-owned ambulance is used, Dennis Williams said there was no way to determine if Gold Cross didn’t send the patient a bill of their own even though they did not transport the patient.
According to Gold Cross Vice President Steven Vincent, there is no possibility that double billing has ever occurred.
“No, we have never done that. We wouldn’t know where to send the bill,” Vincent said.
The majority of the emergency services subcommittee, which includes District 6 Commissioner Ben Hasan as chairman, have long attempted to find ways to cancel the memorandum of understanding with Gold Cross and have the fire department operate ambulance service countywide.
However, Shaw Williams submitted a profit and loss spreadsheet for 2019 and 2020 to the committee that showed the city’s single ambulance operated at a loss that is just below the subsidy paid to Gold Cross for its 50 ambulances and 20 non-emergency vehicles.
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In 2019, the city’s ambulance operated at a $598,310 deficit. To be fair, some expenditures such as $74,347 spent on medical supplies included supplies that were stocked on fire trucks as well as the ambulance.
For that one year, the city had to spend $14,496 on maintenance just to keep that lone ambulance roadworthy.
In 2020, the deficit fell dramatically down to $24,395 and Shaw Williams said that is likely due to the city handling fewer indigent cases, meaning those cases would have been handled by Gold Cross.
According to Vincent, the only way for an ambulance service to be profitable is to have a large volume of service.
MORE: Gold Cross Responds to Commissioner Williams’ Comments
“We operate in Richmond, Columbia, Jefferson and McDuffie counties, and that is the only reason we remain profitable, especially with the amount of indigent care we provide,” Vincent said.
The subcommittee will meet again on Monday, July 19, before releasing its findings to the full commission.
Vincent says that if the city ends the subsidy payments, it will not mean that Gold Cross won’t be able to operate in Augusta, but it will mean a price increase to customers.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
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