Proudly Serving the Communities of: Andover, Byron, Canton, Carthage, Dixfield, Hanover, Mexico, Newry, Peru, Roxbury, & Rumford

A New Building and Facilities for Med-Care Ambulance

 

To the Citizens of the River Valley Communities,

Thank you for taking the opportunity to visit our website and to become informed about the entire Northern Oxford Regional Ambulance Service organization. As you navigate your way through the following paragraphs please take the time to click on the individual icons that are related to each bullet or topic and you will be provided with the full information. You will find all of the corporate documents that govern the corporation along with an immense amount of data surrounding all areas of operation within the organization. Furthermore, you will have access to the financial statistics surrounding the organization, along with an immense amount of information related to the new facility. You will also find an extensive timeline related to the new facility project with actual copies of the letters sent to your town officials throughout the entire process. Lastly there is an entire power point presentation that was conducted with the town officials that discusses the past, present, and future of Med-Care along with everything related to the new facility including pictures of our current station and floor plans of the new facility design.

The Board of Director’s of Med-Care and I truly understand all of the impacts of a project of this nature and have been extremely diligent in our duties throughout this entire process. Though the current economic times are in a considerable low spot this type of project would never have a good time. It is our intention of solidifying a contractor during these less than desirable economic times at an excellent price and significant savings in the long run to the taxpayers. This organization has been in existence for 20 years and it did not get to this point without a vision starting with the founders and carried on throughout the years by the board and the managers. This is the same vision that allows the Board to look forward into the future and not just at this snap shot in time and realizes that this facility must be completed and is well overdue.

After educating yourself throughout this site please feel free to call me at Med-Care Ambulance with any questions that you may have in reference to Med-Care’s operations, our facility project, or anything that you may be looking for. I would like to personally thank you for taking this opportunity to visit this site, your support of Med-Care throughout the past 20 years, and your assistance in helping Med-Care remain a viable and prosperous organization for many years to come.

Respectfully,

Dean R. Milligan
Director of Operations / Chief of Service
Northern Oxford Regional Ambulance Service

  

A Brief History

  • Northern Oxford Regional Ambulance Service (NORAS) dba Med-Care Ambulance was established in 1988 by a committee representing the eleven towns that were previously contracted with Hawthorne's Funeral Home, after being advised that they were going to be closing their business.
  • The first agreement was for a 10 year length of time at which time in 1998 all of the communities determined that they wanted to remain within the corporation and signed the first 10 year extension of the inter-local agreement.
  • Med-Care operates via a board of directors made up of representatives from each town named in the interlocal agreement.
  • In 2008 we will be at the end of that agreement and will be looking for the communities to enter into another 10 year agreement of ownership within the corporation.
  • Med-Care provides emergent and non-emergent care to the sick and injured within the eleven communities. Med-Care provides Advanced Life Support (ALS) medicine, including but not limited to, extensive pharmacological therapies, provision of life saving surgical procedures, and the utilization of numerous life saving pieces of technologically advanced equipment for various conditions.
  • Med-Care operates with 15 full time employees and 50 part time employees year round. We staff 3 ambulances at the ALS level with a minimum of two of them being at the Paramedic level 24 hours a day.
  • Med-Care is currently debt free and we currently own and operate 6 ambulances, 2 SUV’s, and a 20 foot Mass Casualty Incident Response Trailer.

Finances

  • The annual subsidy assessments is currently set at $12.00 per capita and is strictly based on a population formula. Only 17%, $255,000.00, of our overall 1.5 million dollar budget is raised through these subsidies the remaining balance is funded through the revenue that is generated from fees for service through medical billing of insurance companies.
  • If the revenue that we generate from these billing practices were not applied to reduce the impact to all eleven towns the subsidy rate would be $85.50 per capita and would mean that the Town of Rumford would need to pay roughly $555,579.00 in lieu of the current $77,976.00 annually that is raised through taxation to fund Med-Care.

Awards

Med-Care has been given several designations and awards over the past few years. These are some of them:

Non Profit Community Service Leadership Award awarded from River Valley Chamber of Commerce

 April 28, 2007

Presented to Med-Care for a group effort which has made a significant contribution in the enhancement of community and /or regional involvement in The River Valley Area

Mid-Coast Emergency Medical Service Council, Inc. Region VI, Maine

Ems Service of the Year Award to Med-Care Ambulance Service for their dedication and Commitment to Community involvement, interagency cooperation, professional development, and high standards of care presented November 11, 2006

Heartsafe Community - State of Maine

State of Maine Chapter for Risk Watch Safe Community- NFPA

Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association – Affiliate Member

 

Why a New Facility

View Presentation (webpage) Download Presentation (ppt) Download Presentation (PDF)

  • Med-Care has outgrown the current facility, in which we have operated from for the past 17 years, whereas only 4 of these 9 pieces of equipment can be stored inside and 5 of them remain outdoors throughout the year including the winter months. This has a tremendous negative impact on our daily operations as these vehicles are stripped of equipment and supplies and not available for immediate response along with the fact that they sustain all of the other cold related maintenance issues annually.
  • Med-Care Board of Directors established a building committee in July of 2006 to research all possible options including renovations of the current facility, purchasing property in the same location as our current facility and renovating jointly, researching current structures within the general area that could be renovated to support the ambulance company, and lastly to look into the purchase of land and design and build a new facility. After extensive research and several meetings it was determined that the best option for the current and future operations of the company, along with meeting the best interests of the communities we serve was to move forward with the purchasing of land and building a new facility.
  • Med-Care Board authorized the hiring of an architect from Phillips who has 30 years of experience including the design of ambulance facilities for Franklin Memorial Hospital and United Ambulance Service along with many other healthcare related facilities. Currently we have been finalizing the design work and estimates for such facility. View building elevation and floorplan.
  • A public hearing was held in Rumford on October 9th, 2007. All Town Managers, Selectmen and Med-Care Board Members were notified. A full timeline of all of the events surrounding this building can be found here.
  • Med-Care has many funding options that have been researched including conventional funding, Bond Bank funding, and USDA grant and loan funding. The Director of Operations has been and continues to seek out grant opportunities to offset the financial impact as well.
  • View Med-Care's Budgets. 2007 Budget & 2008 Budget.
  • The facility is being designed with a regionalized approach as the primary focus of the design to accommodate future options to house a regional public safety system. See Med-Care's operating expenses compared to all of the other public safety agencies in the towns served.
  • Med-Care is strongly involved, as we have been since our conception and a very willing participant in regionalization talks and would welcome being an intricate part of a regionalization effort to bring together the Fire and Police agencies within the River Valley Region under one facility and one structured delivery model. We are the example of how regionalization works and benefits everyone collectively and feel that this would also work with the other public safety agencies within the region as well.
  • We have waited over the past couple of years for this to come to fruition but all talks have seemed to fail or pass by and we are at a critical juncture and must begin the process of taking care of our operations. We hope that this facility may be the catalyst needed to begin serious talks amongst the communities to develop a jointly owned public safety delivery system.