Submitted Content
To the editor:
In a recent front page article about the transition of EMS services from our hometown Hillsborough EMS/Rescue Squad to RWJUH, The Beacon reiterates comments made by the township committee, especially Frank DelCore, that the transition has been effective. Let’s look a little bit more closely at that claim.
RWJUH is obligated under their sweetheart contract to meet a standard of responding to 90 percent of their calls within 10.59 minutes. Pity the stroke or heart attack victim who falls into the other 10 percent! The other 10 percent of calls can have a response of any amount of time. Also please note that it is RWJUH that reports the response time information to the town. That may be good for RWJ, but it is not for our residents.
I am also not impressed with Committeeman DelCore’s report that supervisors of RWJ toured the township with the OEM director to be aware of “areas of town that may be a bit unique.” At any given time, the supervisors are not driving the ambulances.
Despite this so-called preparation by RWJ, there was an individual who needed an ambulance while attending Senior Citizen Group B’s monthly lunch at the Municipal Building within a week of RWJ’s takeover. 911 was called. Witnesses saw an ambulance circle the Municipal Building and then travel to the Senior Citizen Center further down South Branch Road by the YMCA before it went back to the Municipal Building. This all took precious seconds and minutes. If RWJ staff doesn’t know where to find the Municipal Building – the most central, well-known location in all of Hillsborough – how will they find the unique (or not unique) residences, businesses, farms, fields, rivers and woods tucked away in our 54 square mile township?
The township committee continues to talk about fiscal sustainability, but they have removed ambulances and other equipment from our rescue squad’s garages with no plan for their disposition. Several of these ambulances are relatively new, and one was just delivered. These vehicles along with their equipment were purchased by our taxpayers’ hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the township to now be having discussions about “what makes the most sense going forward” regarding this equipment is a little bit late. These are valuable township assets and should not be dumped in an auction for pennies on the dollar.
On top of this, residents using RWJ’s ambulances will soon feel additional pain in the amount of their bills. While the township leapt at the opportunity to accept RWJ’s “no cost” offer, it is only “no cost” to the township government. I am sure that residents who suffer emergencies would like to be fiscally sustainable too, but they won’t have a choice. They will have to make up that cost and overhead, since RWJ will recoup their costs at their patients’ expense. Certainly the township could have reported out on that by now as part of their “effective start” of service.
So our township taxes still went up this year despite this deal, we’ve lost our local EMS and Rescue Squad that served our town for 50 years, we’re wasting our assets, we have a new ambulance service that couldn’t find its way to the Municipal Building, we don’t know what RWJUH services will cost their patients – all with unresolved conflicts of interest over this with a member of the township committee – and it is all considered an “effective start” to the service? Seems like only an “effective end” to our old service, which could be really unfortunate for the next resident who suffers a serious emergency.
Meryl Bisberg
Hillsborough
