Vanguard Healthcare Management official responded this week to criticism that the company's EMTs, who will take over Hackensack's daytime ambulance service on Sept. 15, lack experience and are poorly paid.
Company President Ryan Greenberg said employees make an average of $15 an hour and have a minimum of three years experience, often with other professional or volunteer departments.
Several employees currently ride with the city's nighttime volunteer ambulance service, he said.
"Vanguard Healthcare has a similar mission to many of our hospitals: We're out to provide the best possible care to our patients," Greenberg said.
Officials at Rutherford-based Vanguard, which has managed Hackensack University Medical Center's ambulance service for four years, had previously declined comment about the transfer of ambulance services despite being called substandard by city Fire Department union officials.
The city's eight Fire Department emergency medical technicians will lose their jobs when the service is transferred. Much of the residents' wrath has been directed at Vanguard.
For example, a coalition of city residents and businesses distributed a flier that stated the turnover rate of EMTs at private ambulance companies is 40 percent.
Greenberg said turnover is lower at Vanguard, which offers benefits including tuition assistance for its 150 employees, who often study to become paramedics or nurses.
"We don't have many people who leave," Greenberg said, though he declined to provide turnover numbers.
Greenberg said the Hackensack service will be staffed, in part, by existing employees who are currently part-time and have been waiting for an upgrade to full-time status.
Charles Grieco, the president of the Hackensack Uniformed Fire Officers Association, countered that Vanguard employees, regardless of the company's hiring standards, will be a step down from city EMTs.
"None of their people are going to have the experience that my guys have and, when you look down the road, you're going to see they don't have the training either," he said. "This is a career when you come here, it's not just a stepping stone."
Greenberg said, however, that Vanguard's clients have been satisfied. Officials in Garfield, which Vanguard services for the medical center, confirmed they are happy with the company's performance.
Vanguard does not have a state license to provide emergency medical care because its business is "staffing and managing hospital- based ambulance service" not providing standalone service for towns, Greenberg said. The company operates under the EMS licenses of the hospitals it works for, which is permitted by the state.
Vanguard makes its money through its contracts with hospitals and does not bill patients for transportation, he said.
The company operates in New Jersey and Delaware but Greenberg would not specify the number of hospital contracts it has.
He would not comment on contracts the company previously held with St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton and Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth that were not renewed except to say they had parted on "a positive note." (source) |
