Community Corner

Durham Ambulance Company Doesn't Want To Release Financial Data

The town wants to know how much money the agency has so it can determine how much to budget for the ambulance service.

Generally, when town leaders put together an annual budget they cull through the finances of every department that seeks funding and scrutinize how those agencies spend their money.

In Durham, that’s not the process that was followed with the Durham Volunteer Ambulance Corps Inc., which for the last several years has gotten about $36,000 annually from the town.

While that figure represents just a tiny amount of Durham’s overall $4.5 million budget, town leaders decided this year that it was time to see how the ambulance group handles its finances.

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The ambulance association, however, doesn’t want to hand over its financial documents. So adamant is the agency in safeguarding that information, its board of directors recently approved a resolution saying, “All financial data related to Durham Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Inc. shall be accessed, used and disclosed only with explicit authorization by the Board of Directors. Financial data must never be divulged to anyone outside of the Corps without written authorization of the Board of Directors.”

That directive flies in the face of state and federal law, however. As a nonprofit agency, the ambulance corps is required to make its annual tax returns public, an IRS spokesman said.

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The online site Guidetar.com compiles tax returns from the IRS of nonprofit agencies, such as the ambulance company. The most recent tax return available for the Durham Ambulance Corps on the site was from 2008.

The company’s tax return for that year shows it took in $144,860 in revenues and spent $138,803. The return also shows that the company had net cash assets of $6,057 for 2008 and $57,374 from the previous year, for a total of $63,431 for the tax year that ended in June of 2008.

The ambulance corps paid out $75,146 in stipends to its volunteer EMTs and spent another $11,136 on billing services, the tax return shows. It also paid out $31,423 in compensation for “current officers, directors, key employees,” the return shows.

The ambulance board’s decision to require prior authorization before making such data public was in reaction to a proposal by the town’s Board of Finance earlier this year for the ambulance company’s financial data.

First Selectwoman Laura Francis said it makes sense for the town to seek such information because the ambulance company requests town revenues each year to help it operate. The town wants to know, especially in such difficult economic times, if the ambulance corps has enough money on hand to help defray some of its own costs.

“Possibly you can start contributing to some of the expenses that the town covers,” she said.

She added that she is aware of the ambulance directors’ vote not to release financial data and “I’ve asked the chief to reconsider that decision.”

Thomas Wimler, the ambulance chief, said his agency hasn’t released the information because it hasn’t gotten a formal request from the town.

He also said he doesn’t understand why the town isn’t making a similar request to other agencies, such as the fire department.

“We don’t want to be singled out. Don’t treat us differently than you treat anyone else.”

His ambulance company, Wimler said, has worked diligently in recent years to be as financially independent as possible. The ambulance company was created in 1951 as a volunteer organization and operated that way until a few years ago when it became more and more difficult to get new recruits. The demands of volunteering for an ambulance corps, Wimler said, have become much more time-consuming and expensive in the last couple of decades. The EMTs who serve the agency must undergo constant training and be on a rotating call schedule, day and night.

For that reason, the ambulance company several years ago began paying its volunteers a stipend for being on call and for responding to calls. Volunteers get $2.50 per hour to be on call and anywhere from $8 to $18 per hour, depending on the volunteer’s years or service, when responding to a call.

The ambulance company’s main source of revenue comes from billing patients’ insurance carriers. That money helps pay the stipends of the volunteers and the company that does the billing. The money the town gives the ambulance company pays for operating expenses, such as ambulance parts and repairs.

During a recent interview Wimler declined to say how much money the ambulance corps takes in from insurance billing.

The company’s 2008 tax return states that the company took in $94,639 that year from insurance billings and $50,185 from Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Wimler said the ambulance company does not charge patients who have no insurance and it doesn’t charge patients whose insurance does not cover the entire ambulance bill. That practice, he said, saves residents money and it saves the town from having to budget more for the ambulance corps.

He points to towns like Middlefield and North Stonington as examples of communities that either pay more for ambulance services or whose residents pay more when they use the services. Middlefield contracts with a private ambulance company, which bills patients directly for services when insurance doesn’t pay or if the patient doesn’t have insurance.

North Stonington funds its own ambulance corps and the town this year is spending $225,500 on it.

“Essentially, Durham is getting a pretty good deal,” Wimler said. “We’re saving the taxpayers money.”


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