ndpemt519

The amount of supposition here is astounding. Not only does Transcare hold numerous 911 contracts with numerous hospitals throughout the city, it also does do interfacility transports (which anyone knows can be an emergency in itself) but no regulation or rule states that a person having a medical emergency has to call 911 and no regulation or rule states that Transcare has to call 911 for said emergency, no matter your definition of 'emergency'.
No, I do not know the reason for the vehicle, but I wouldn't be so pompous as to go on a 'public' forum and start assuming it was 'just go red lights and sirens'. How hard would it have been to pick up the phone, call Transcare and ask?

I agree that EMS should have vests. In the Georgia incident where five firefighters were taken hostage, they were responding to a general illness call and the suspect was sitting in a chair.
How could anyone have known that scene wasn't safe until it turned bad? Or are people suggesting we send police in first on every EMS/Fire call (good luck with that you would need to hire many more police officers at a prohibitive cost). In fact, if someone was that intent on harming EMS, they would act okay in front of the cops, wait for the scene to be called secure, then pull out the gun.
Off topic, but properly sized vests are important. When I was an NYPD Auxiliary I frequently had to wear a vest that looked like it was sized for a 12 year old (I came into auxiliary just after they stopped giving individual vests, when I got there I was told they only had female individual vests left)

Medics are at medic pay.

I think the question of all questions is what is rumors and what REALLY happened, and could it have happened to any other company? If they are keeping employees on, then they must be either planning to resume operations shortly, has a large rainy day fund, or are awaiting a buyout.

While I agree with the majority of your post, without doing what's right for business we can't treat patients. At the end of the day, if an agency has to choose between buying an epi pen or paying the insurance on their ambulance, we all know what the choice is going to be. It is sad that it comes down to this, but due to the current economy and crap insurance reimbursement rates, EMS (and more specifically our patients) are having to pay the price. Some agencies have more money than others, but I highly doubt many EMS bosses would say that they're 100% comfortable with the current financial state of their company.
I also need to say that there always seems to be gossip in the EMS community about Care1. I'm not going to pretend I know all the details of the current situation. I have yet to see any memo from the company, region, or state regarding the circumstances, so anything said about it on here is purely speculation. What we do know though, is the suspension of ALS services took place almost two weeks ago, and the company is still running and doing calls. That in itself is something to be said for them. I also saw several posts on here about how the company is allegedly only paying paramedics at the EMT rate. If anyone has a memo or a pay stub from the company proving this, please feel free to post it. I have spoken to several employees regarding this and found out it is in fact not true at all. The company has cut a few trucks day to day, however they ONLY cut shifts from part timers. All the full time employees are still bringing home their regular pay check and benefits, which I'm sure they are very grateful of. I fail to see how the company has done wrong by their employees in this current situation.

While I agree with the majority of your post, without doing what's right for business we can't treat patients. At the end of the day, if an agency has to choose between buying an epi pen or paying the insurance on their ambulance, we all know what the choice is going to be. It is sad that it comes down to this, but due to the current economy and crap insurance reimbursement rates, EMS (and more specifically our patients) are having to pay the price. Some agencies have more money than others, but I highly doubt many EMS bosses would say that they're 100% comfortable with the current financial state of their company.
I also need to say that there always seems to be gossip in the EMS community about Care1. I'm not going to pretend I know all the details of the current situation. I have yet to see any memo from the company, region, or state regarding the circumstances, so anything said about it on here is purely speculation. What we do know though, is the suspension of ALS services took place almost two weeks ago, and the company is still running and doing calls. That in itself is something to be said for them. I also saw several posts on here about how the company is allegedly only paying paramedics at the EMT rate. If anyone has a memo or a pay stub from the company proving this, please feel free to post it. I have spoken to several employees regarding this and found out it is in fact not true at all. The company has cut a few trucks day to day, however they ONLY cut shifts from part timers. All the full time employees are still bringing home their regular pay check and benefits, which I'm sure they are very grateful of. I fail to see how the company has done wrong by their employees in this current situation.

Policy Statement 10-01 says "During the regulatory approval process, the SEMSCO and SEMAC are strongly encouraging all ambulance agencies to comply with the following:..."<br /><br />NYS Part 800 Regulations were never changed to require either defib or epi on BLS ambulances.<br /><br />Operating a BLS ambulance without a defib or epi is another issue as community expectations on standard of care come into play.

From press release at EmpressEMS.com:

I wish them a speedy recovery. I don’t mean to be insensitive but didn’t they have a bailout system? If they did the fire spread so fast that they couldn’t use it.

I find them distracting. Another thing to look at when backing up.
But I guess if you're alone and backing up, it helps you survey what's there. And since many accidents occur while backing up, this may be a help for that. It's not a replacement for apparatus handling skills, spotters, or mirrors. Camera or not, larger apparatus should never be backed up alone, and drivers should know the size of their vehicle and "pre plan" prior the backing up.
Personally, I prefer sensors that beep when you near an object, I think New Rochelle E-21 has this.

Short answer is no. There is no protocol for sPO2 based therapy ALS or BLS.

Fire based is absolutely not the best way to go. A dedicated 3rd service EMS is the ideal way to go. However it is more expensive to implement and maintain such a service. Once municipalities start looking at EMS as more than just a ride to the hospital and use it as an integrated part of their healthcare system, benefits emerge that cannot be accomplished with an agency trying to also serve as police or firefighters. In other countries and in a growing number of communities here EMS is used as an outreach to reduce ER visits, able to mitigate minor illness and injury on scene rather than transporting, and provide local services like education and vaccination.
The IAFF is absolutely only pushing EMS because it keeps their members busy and helps to protect them from budget cuts. If cities were burning like they did 30 years ago there is no way this would be anywhere near their agenda. Why would they seek to add more work to an already busy workforce? EMS is a perfect fit as fire companies are already distributed throughout the community and already somewhat familiar with EMS due to the nature of the job. This is not to say that fire based systems don't work. That's just flat out stupid as they are currently performing very well through out the country. But to suggest the IAFF began aggressively pursuing EMS for anything other than self preservation is naive.

Then shame on the MEDIC on scene....although I am not surprised......
One point I would like to bring up, and I hate to single one person out, but a real asset in these type of incidents is 31-2. Granted there are alot of farmers in the departments up yonder, but Chris, given his work background on one of Dutchess' biggest farms, as well as his years of training and experience make him worth his weight in gold in Farm/Rescue incidents.