EMT'Bs and minimum wage

[ExpatMedic0]

a taxi driver with a stretcher could do the same thing EMT's do with no difference in patient outcome.

Maybe true, but Taxi drivers make more... would it at least be fare to say EMT's should make as much as taxi drivers? Plus Taxi drivers do not have to carry there customers down many flights of stairs.

 

[JPINFV]

Maybe true, but Taxi drivers make more... would it at least be fare to say EMT's should make as much as taxi drivers? Plus Taxi drivers do not have to carry there customers down many flights of stairs.

Issues:

Supply and demand of workers.

Taxi drivers get almost 100% reimbursement for their work. What's the reimbursement rate at your work and what percent is due to improper and/or inadequate documentation?

 

[nkara]

I believe where I live they start emt-b's at $10 hour and cardiac at $15. Not exactly sure. I know for me working as a cna right now I make $13 and I don't care what they tell you that's not enough for what I do either. :wacko:

 

[WolfmanHarris]

Taxi drivers get almost 100% reimbursement for their work. What's the reimbursement rate at your work and what percent is due to improper and/or inadequate documentation?

Fee for service seems to be a losing model for EMS. My preferred (and most familiar) is a tax-base funded system. Fees (if any) can offset costs, but the service isn't dependent on them.

Failing that, the other viable funding formula I see is the run EMS as a loss leader for hospitals. If they accept a certain amount of lost revenue on BS in EMS (and the ED for that matter) as a way to get patients admitted where their more complicated care offsets the money lost in EMS and ED. Can't speak too much to this, as private insurance is something of a foreign concept to me, so I'm not totally clear how reimbursement works.

 

[ExpatMedic0]

Issues:
What's the reimbursement rate at your work and what percent is due to improper and/or inadequate documentation?

I make a lot more than 8 bucks an hour and have some benefits. But I am not a basic. I currently work for a non-transport municipal 3rd party. Some of my wage and our funding also comes from taxes. I do Mostly Occupational health and special event stand bye. The patients are not charged anything, not from me or my agency anyway. We bill the client holding the event a flat rate or the facility needing medical staff.
If I choose to call AMR they are billed anywhere from 300-1000 for a transport I am told.

 

[akflightmedic]

I was only an OR license holder as that is where my Medical Director was...I worked overseas under his license. So pay issues, I am not aware of but 39K a year for Single Role Medic sounds pretty darn good compared to most places in the US.

But by increasing standards, you diminish the supply while demand remains same. If this were done on a National level instead of one state trying to lead the charge, I think you would see a pendulum swing...

 

[JPINFV]

Fee for service seems to be a losing model for EMS. My preferred (and most familiar) is a tax-base funded system. Fees (if any) can offset costs, but the service isn't dependent on them.

While I agree that a tax based system for 911 work is prefered, conversations like this revolve around the system currently in place, not the system you'd like to go to. Additionally, 911 being a tax based system doesn't mean that non-emergent IFT is going to be tax based.

Failing that, the other viable funding formula I see is the run EMS as a loss leader for hospitals. If they accept a certain amount of lost revenue on BS in EMS (and the ED for that matter) as a way to get patients admitted where their more complicated care offsets the money lost in EMS and ED. Can't speak too much to this, as private insurance is something of a foreign concept to me, so I'm not totally clear how reimbursement works.

The only way that prehosptial treatment and transport can work as a loss leader is if the hospital can choose to divert the more profitable chief complaints to their hospital, regardless of distance. The ED basically works as a loss leader because that's where a large amount of admissions comes from. EMS, on the other hand, is not set up to function like that. I don't think anyone is going to look forward to the day where the protocol reads, "CVAs, MIs, and MVCs with insurance all come our hospital, everyone else goes elsewhere."

 

[JPINFV]

I make a lot more than 8 bucks an hour and have some benefits. But I am not a basic. I currently work for a non-transport municipal 3rd party. Some of my wage and our funding also comes from taxes. I do Mostly Occupational health and special event stand bye. The patients are not charged anything, not from me or my agency anyway. We bill the client holding the event a flat rate or the facility needing medical staff.
If I choose to call AMR they are billed anywhere from 300-1000 for a transport I am told.

So if you're mostly doing event standby and occupational health, then you're mostly not carrying people down stairs and your prior argument is a non-issue. Additionally, if you value your time at more than $8/hr for the work being done (e.g. truly enjoying a particular job understandably drops the momentary value of your time since you're gaining more than money), then why work there?

 

[Pinknikkij]

Any updates on central fl pay?

 

[Sandog]

There's a surplus of EMT-Bs everywhere, and they just aren't worth paying more due to that and that they're not educated enough to be worth more

Speak for yourself.

 

[JPINFV]

Speak for yourself.

Yea... sorry, but for the most part yea. My second EMT job was after I finished a BS and was 3/4ths of the way through an MS. If I was planning on sticking around, I probably could have gotten more than a few more dollars an hour than I was getting. It being a temporary (as in count the months on 2 hands), I stuck with the standard pay scale.


The problem with EMS and it's career ladder is that someone sitting in an ambulance just running calls isn't going to be changed all that much by education level since the expectation for those people is going to be based on the lowest common denominator and "is the person willing to do their job correctly?" (which is commonly a "no" hence why it's important). The problem is that the career ladder for EMS that doesn't consist of "let's have positions so we can say we have a career ladder (congrats, you're an EMS "captain" commanding a crew of 2 on an ambulance) is more often than not positions that require a provider to be more off an ambulance than on or the dreaded IFT calls (CCTs)

EMS, pick a career ladder or pick staying on a 911 ambulance. More often than not, you get to choose one or the other, but not both.

 

[emscrazy1]

Any updates on central fl pay?

You're looking at about $9.50