Two Valley emergency medical chiefs aired their complaints about an area dispatching service directly to Gov. Dannel Malloy’s office Monday.
Jared Heon, chief of the Ansonia Rescue Medical Services, and David Lenart, chief of Derby Storm Ambulance, took part in a meeting between Malloy staffer Mark Ojakian, officials from the state Department of Health, and various emergency responders and managers from the region.
Ojakian is Malloy’s chief of staff.
The purpose of the meeting was to gather information about CMED New Haven, an emergency dispatch service that covers — and is funded by — 18 municipalities in the area.
The future of CMED New Haven is in doubt because some of the larger municipalities — New Haven, West Haven, Hamden — want to pull out.
Officials from those cities have said for years they pay too much money to CMED and get little service in return.
Generally, CMED New Haven facilitates radio communication between hospitals and ambulances. Click here for a previous story.
In the Valley, CMED employees dispatch Derby Storm Ambulance and the Derby Fire Department, Ansonia Rescue Medical Services and Echo Hose Ambulance in Shelton.
Lenart said his and Heon’s goal at the Monday meeting in Hartford was to let the governor’s office know how closely CMED New Haven is intertwined with local emergency services.
“We wanted it understood that the Valley has a big stake in what happens here, because our forces are directly dispatched by them,” he said. “The bigger cities use them just for ambulance to hospital communication, but in our case it is our actual dispatching center. if the system collapses, that has a big impact on us.”
Secondly, Lenart said he wanted to state for the record that CMED New Haven hasn’t been willing to communicate with Valley officials about whether they plan to stay afloat.
“The meeting was to air our concerns, and basically state our grievances about what’s going on with CMED,” Lenart said. “We brought the governor’s office up to speed about where we are, and about the lack of communication we’ve had with CMED.”
The chairperson of the CMED New Haven Board of Directors told the Valley Indy last week that CMED New Haven honchos are scheduled to meet with New Haven officials Wednesday, (June 18) to see if a financial deal can be struck to make payments more fair for the City of New Haven.
New Haven pays some $340,000 annually to support CMED New Haven, while the City of Derby pays just $35,000, and Derby receives more services. If the bigger cities were to pull out, other municipalities would have to pay more to keep the organization running as-is.
The meeting lasted about 90 minutes, Lenart said.
There were no specific next steps addressed, but presumably officials will be keeping an eye on Wednesday’s meeting between CMED and the City of New Haven.
If CMED goes under, the Valley emergency responders already have back-up plans in place, so public safety will not be affected, Lenart said.
“We want to stress that to the public. We’ve been talking about this for some time, and we have two or three plans in place to deal with this,” he said.