The Town of Montgomery Ambulance Corps (TOMAC) has been working timelessly to supply advanced life support (ALS) services to the town and its three villages. After a quarterly check-in at town board meeting, it may come sooner than they thought.

In early March, TOMAC announced that they received approval from the Hudson Valley Regional Emergency Medical Advisory Committee (REMAC) to progress with their timeline to providing ALS services. Because of a hefty application process with many requirements, they also announced a new Chief Paramedic/Director of Operations Rich Willey, as well as other new operational improvements.

TOMAC is currently in a contract with Ambulnz, a Newburgh-based private ambulance service. Ambulnz has been providing ALS to residents while TOMAC gets through the application process to take over these ALS services.

Originally, TOMAC hoped to have ALS capability within a year of partnering with Ambulnz, but now, it could be as early as June 1.

TOMAC Trustee and Executive Board member Sylvie Rainaldi mentioned this along with a quarterly report at last week’s Town of Montgomery board meeting. She announced that they received unanimous approval from the Hudson Valley EMS Council as well as the Department of Health.

Among other announcements were statistics of their first few months in this new contract.

“Of our percent answered, we are averaging 96 percent this year. We were at 88 percent last year. What that means is, on average, we were dropping 26 calls a month last year. So if you compare that to just six calls in January or seven in March, you can see we’re able to capture additional calls,” said Rainaldi.

She also explained the transport rate statistic, which in large part declined because of COVID. “When COVID hit, people were calling the ambulance the same amount of time, but not going to the hospital. So our transport rate went on average from 70 to 60 percent, which cut 10 percent of our revenue because we bill on transport,” said Rainaldi, who mentioned that they’re inching closer to that 70 percent this year.

Their newest metric they are monitoring is response times, which are separated by basic life support (BLS) services/less urgent calls and ALS/higher level care.

“The first is our alpha average response, which is for basic life support or the least urgent calls. Our goal is to be less than 13 minutes on average, and you can see that our average is 9.9 minutes,” said Rainaldi, who continued to discuss ALS calls. “The last three, charlie, delta and echo, require advanced life support. For those calls, our goal is to be less than 10 minutes and you can see we’re averaging 8.5 minutes.”

If TOMAC does start providing ALS services June 1, they’d be ending their contract with Ambulnz. Rainaldi mentioned that they already gave Ambulnz notice of this.

Overall, TOMAC and the town are both happy with the direction of ambulance services. TOMAC answers over 2,500 calls per year for the Town of Montgomery, Villages of Walden, Maybrook and Montgomery, and the Hamlet of Coldenham.

They also provide mutual aid.

This was discussed after Town of Montgomery Supervisor Ron Feller asked if they get the out-of-Montgomery calls as well.

Rainaldi answered, “Absolutely, we’ve always been providing mutual aid. That’s part of our relationships with neighboring municipalities and organizations like Newburgh or Blooming Grove because we need help and they need help. It’s always going to be a balance of wanting to help people just as much as they help us.”

Their next steps involve a lot of fundraising and planning for ALS services. Rainaldi mentions that they’ve already done an expansion as part of space planning. “We’ve already grown out of our bay with all of these new services. If you drive past our bay, we actually have a new detached garage that we’ve added to the side of our bay in Walden because the Y car, or SUV for paramedics, needs to be in a heated space with electricity,” said Rainaldi.

TOMAC is eager to soon provide ALS services to the town.