News

By Rich Pollack

Should Delray Beach knock $175,329 off a $3.2 million annual fire-service contract with Highland Beach because the rescue vehicle owned by the coastal town is being used to transport Delray Beach residents to the hospital?
Highland Beach commissioners and their town attorney think so.
As Highland Beach and Delray Beach wrangled over a proposed contract in which Delray Beach would continue to provide personnel for the small town’s fire station, questions arose as to who should get to keep the fees Delray Beach charges to residents transported in the back of Highland Beach’s rescue wagon to a hospital.
Under the current agreement signed by both Delray Beach and Highland Beach almost 15 years ago, Delray Beach Fire-Rescue personnel staff a fire station and ambulance owned by Highland Beach.
The agreement specifies that all hospital transport fees paid by Highland Beach residents or their insurance companies following a call for a medical emergency should go to Delray Beach.
What the agreement doesn’t address, however, is who should receive the money paid by Delray Beach residents who are transported by Highland Beach’s rescue wagon.
According to numbers provided by Delray Beach to Highland Beach, almost 400 of the 517 patients taken to the hospital by the Highland Beach-based ambulance were not Highland Beach residents. In all, Delray Beach received about $130,462 in revenue as a result of those calls. The city also received about $44,866 for transporting Highland Beach residents.
“Based on the information Delray Beach recently provided, it appears that personnel and equipment Highland Beach is paying 100 percent for is being used 75 percent of the time in Delray Beach,” Highland Beach Town Attorney Glen Torcivia said. “It appears that Highland Beach is now subsidizing Delray Beach.”
Delray Beach officials pointed out that the agreement between the two cities allows Delray Beach Fire-Rescue to use the Highland Beach-based truck to respond to calls within the Delray Beach city limits.
But the question of who should keep the fees received as a result of calls from outside the Highland Beach town limits hadn’t surfaced until after Delray Beach city commissioners asked for an additional 20 percent administrative fee before they would agree to renew the agreement, claiming the city was losing money by providing the service to the town.
In his letter to Delray Beach City Attorney Noel Pfeffer, Torcivia is asking for reimbursement of all transport fees collected during fiscal 2015.
“It would appear that Highland Beach should receive a credit for the full amount of revenue ($175,329) received by Delray Beach,” he wrote.
So far, Torcivia said, Delray Beach has not responded to his request. At least one city commissioner, Mitch Katz, said he needs more information from the city attorney’s office and from the finance department before drawing any conclusions.
Having fire-rescue vehicles transport patients to a nearby hospital instead of waiting for an ambulance is a common practice in South Florida as well as in other parts of the country, according to Robert Finn, a senior manager with the Matrix Consulting Group. That firm is conducting a study to determine the feasibility of a barrier-island fire district that would include Highland Beach and several other coastal communities in Palm Beach County.
Finn said the agreement between Delray Beach and Highland Beach is also common practice within the industry.
“Whoever is providing the service generally keeps the revenue,” he said.
That’s the case in neighboring towns.
Currently, the city of Boynton Beach provides fire-rescue service to Ocean Ridge and Briny Breezes and keeps fees charged to residents of those towns who are transported by paramedics. During the last fiscal year, Boynton Beach transported 110 patients from those two communities to the hospital.
In Manalapan and South Palm Beach, Palm Beach County Fire Rescue provides fire and emergency medical services. The county took 232 patients from South Palm Beach to the hospital and transported 133 patients from Manalapan during the last fiscal year.
Delray Beach also provides fire and rescue service to Gulf Stream, however transport numbers were not available. In all cases — with the exception of Highland Beach — the agency providing service owns the rescue wagon used to transport patients.
The practice of having three paramedics assigned to a rescue vehicle helps make transportation of patients by fire and emergency medical service providers feasible.
“That’s more common in Florida than anywhere else,” Finn said.