Unpaid Bills Sink Wis. Rescue Squad, Forces Closure

When the Delavan Rescue Squad responds to a 911 call, it doesn't ask how a patient will pay for the ambulance call.

Now the rescue squad, one of only a handful of private nonprofit ambulance companies in the state, is going out of business, partly because of roughly $800,000 in uncollected bills.

The squad has responded to emergencies in the City of Delavan since 1941 but will cease to exist on March 31. However, 911 calls will still be answered and residents probably won't notice a difference because the Delavan Rescue Squad is in negotiations with five private ambulance companies interested in buying the company.

"In the end, it was uncollected bills and people unable to pay us," said Tom O'Neill, a Delavan Rescue Squad board member. "There's a major shortfall in hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, and we can't continue to operate with that."

Another reason for the rescue squad's financial straits is that it renovated a building for new headquarters and living quarters and then built a new garage.

"The past administration made bad business decisions. They built a building they couldn't really afford the way they're structured," O'Neill said Thursday.

The Delavan Rescue Squad employs 30 emergency medical technicians and paramedics and staffs two ambulances round the clock with the ability to use four ambulances if necessary. In addition to the City of Delavan, it also handles response for the Town of Richmond. Shuttling patients between hospitals, called inter-facility transport, is a major portion of Delavan Rescue Squad's business, but it also handles transportation of individuals to hospitals and clinics and responds to emergencies such as traffic accidents. Payment comes from Medicare, Medicaid and insurance, but whatever is not paid through those entities is the patient's responsibility. And quite a few aren't paying up.

"A lot of them we've written off as uncollectable debt," said O'Neill.

The rescue squad's volunteer board of directors decided last week to shut down the nonprofit and notified employees on Saturday. Negotiations with forprofit companies interested in buying the Delavan Rescue Squad will include hiring everyone now working for the rescue squad.

The City of Delavan has a contract with the rescue squad through 2015 and is part of the negotiations with private for-profit businesses seeking to buy the Delavan Rescue Squad.

"The city has been working in the last year to see whether or not some restructuring could avoid the necessity of this action. But it didn't work out," said Delavan City Administrator Denise Pieroni. "We'd love to have seen them continue, but it didn't look like there was any financial plan that would work out."

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Copyright, 2013, Journal Sentinel, All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2013 Journal Sentinel Inc.