SWAMPSCOTT — Cataldo Ambulance Service is planning to station an additional non-transporting vehicle with a paramedic at its Burrill Street location, while the town still has not signed a new contract for the ambulance services with the company.
Facing a statewide staffing crisis in EMS (emergency medical services), the Cataldo Ambulance Service company decided to try a different approach and add non-transporting vehicles with paramedics to its stations in the area to make sure they can respond faster to emergencies, better manage the call volume and have availability for advanced life support, when needed, said President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Cataldo.
Such a non-transporting vehicle with a senior paramedic, who has all the same life-saving equipment as an advanced life-support ambulance, will be added to Atlantic Ambulance, a Cataldo Ambulance Service division, stationed at 86 Burrill St. in Swampscott, in six to eight weeks, Cataldo said. It will be able to provide additional EMS services to meet the needs in both Swampscott and Marblehead.
“That is an extra resource that will be available to make sure that advanced life-support services are available to the patients that need it,” said Cataldo.
At the same time, Atlantic Ambulance continues to operate in Swampscott without a contract. As The Item reported on Dec. 26, 2021, a contract between Atlantic Ambulance and the Town of Swampscott expired on June 30, 2021, before the new one was signed.
Cataldo said Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald was favorable and agreeable that signing a contract would be the right and prudent thing to do at a meeting that took place at least a month ago. Fire Chief Graham Archer confirmed that the town administrator and Cataldo representatives reached an agreement to move forward with the contract.
But as of March 17, Cataldo Ambulance Service and Atlantic Ambulance have not received any documents or heard from town counsel.
“We are not in control of that,” said Cataldo. “We continue to provide service to the town as we customarily have and we certainly wouldn’t change that without providing adequate notice or having further discussions with administration.”
There were no specific discussions of any reasons for the delay in the execution of a new contract, Cataldo said.
“We still are covered. I don’t want folks (to be) concerned that when they’re in need, that they won’t get the support,” said Fitzgerald. “We have complete confidence in Cataldo to meet the public-safety needs.”
Fitzgerald said that he has not received any complaints from residents so far about the town’s ambulance services.
“We are probably imminently going to execute that (contract); we are just working out a few final adjustments,” he said on March 8.
The staffing crisis is affecting the EMS industry because many certified paramedics continue to exit the high-turnover industry while production of new certified personnel went down almost to non-existence across the whole country for a year and a half since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cataldo said. EMS workers often move on from ambulance services to municipal agencies, fire departments, nursing schools or physician assistant’s schools.
“Now, you see this shortage where people are going to play catch up for probably a reasonably significant period of time, trying to get staffing back up to acceptable levels,” said Cataldo.
According to Cataldo, the primary response times at his company are still consistent with what they’ve always been.
