Paramedic Unit Closing

[Guest Guest]

As announced on their web site, MONOC, the company that runs the paramedic units running out of Clara Maass (Unit 256) in Belleville and the old West Hudson Hospital (Unit 257) will be cutting back the units significantly.

In a nut shell, 256 will be shut down entirely and 257 will be pared back to a 7 am to 11 pm operation only. That will leave one paramedic unit based in Kearny for their entire coverage area (Kearny, Lyndhurst, Harrison, East Newark, North Arlington, Belleville and Nutley) and no unit for the same area between 11 pm and 7 am. The web site gives MONOC's reasons for this and the other units in the state they are closing.

The area will have to rely on the availability of Paramedic units from Newark, Jersey City and possibly Clifton and Montclair. The Clifton unit is also a MONOC unit so I doubt they will be much of a help.

If anyone is interested, the web site is www.monoc.org/executive.cfm

Please spread the word. This needs to be halted before someone is hurt or worse.

[Guest MONOC_EMT]

This is only the latest attempt by Vince Robbins to line his pockets at the expense of the people we serve. Not long along a memo was put out by MONOC instructing our Paramedics to "educate" BLS providers that it is okay and in fact beneficial to wait on scene for a paramedic unit for up to 10 minutes instead of just going to the hospital.

In Mr. Robbins perfect world there would be no paid municipal EMS, only volunteers units who do not bill. This would allow MONC to be the only billing ambulance service. This is obvious by MONOC’s strict conflict of interest policy which prevents EMT’s from working at MONOC if they choose to work for an ambulance service which bills for services in areas that MONC has paramedic units.

It is time for everyone concerned about patient care in New Jersey to start lobbying the state to fix the current system. Bring back EMT-I's or EMT-CC's like New York has this will allow an advance level of patient care as the ambulance's would be both BLS and ALS.

The state should also do away with the franchise system that prevents cities and towns from running ALS units. As it stands now ALS/Paramedic units in the state are run by 4 or 5 entities, this system may have work 20 years ago but it obviously does not work now.

Hopefully, the citizens of NJ will stand up and demand an end to this monopoly.