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NO RESPECT FOR EMS

No Respect for EMS

The following letter to Mayor Bloomberg is being published at its author's request:

Dear Mr. Mayor,

Why is the Emergency Medical Service so valueless in your eyes? In 1980, 2,800 of us answered 400,000 medical emergencies. Now, 26 years later, we're still only 2,800 EMTs and Paramedics but we responded to 1.2 million medical emergencies last year. If that's not a superhuman productivity increase, what is?

You know the meager pay is the cause of our 20-percent annual attrition rate, but you've done nothing to address this. Why don't you care?

You are a financial whiz, but you let the city squeeze one of its most cost-effective vital services by low-balling good men and women who've taken the financial shaft for 30 years. The $115,000,000 we generated last year through ambulance billing covers the payroll for all of EMS, but you swear there's no money.

A $10,000 raise for the entire service would cost only $28 million out of the FDNY budget of $1.185 billion, and EMS would raise that through billing. A $20,000 raise, which still isn't enough but would bring salaries closer to Sanitation, FDNY and NYPD and reflect the job's real value, would cost only $56 million, and again EMS would raise that through billing.

As an EMT paired with a partner, I treat and transport between 800 and 1,000 often critically ill or injured patients a year. This is the contribution of just a single ambulance; what more can we do?

Like so many others, you seem to have the mindset that interprets the dedication and willingness of the good men and women to serve their fellow citizens not as a virtue to be valued, but rather a character flaw to be exploited. This comes from someone who voted for you twice.

JEFF NICHOLS