Hadley fire chief pitches full ambulance service starting in 2026

Hadley Fire Chief Michael Spanknebel last week pitched a plan to the Select Board to start operting full ambulance service next year. GAZETTE FILE PHOTO
Published: 01-30-2025 7:19 PM |
HADLEY — By Jan. 1, 2026, Hadley firefighters could be running both a primary Advanced Life Support ambulance and a back-up Basic Life Support ambulance, if a plan proposed by Fire Chief Michael Spanknebel for staffing up the department gets support from town officials and voters this spring.
But adding seven full-time firefighters, to ensure around-the-clock coverage for all primary and secondary medical calls and fire emergencies, would come at an initial cost of nearly $600,000, with $312,283 in the ambulance budget and $284,313 in the fire budget.
The idea of this spending, Spanknebel told the Select Board at its Jan. 22 meeting, would be to get at least two paramedics and two firefighters on for each 24-hour shift. If both ambulances need to be out at the same time, the call force would then be summoned for station coverage, he said.
“That’s my recommendation to you,” Spanknebel said.
The department currently has 10 full-time firefighters, but a total of 34 firefighters and firefighters/EMTs when paid, on-call members are included.
The department’s budget proposal for next year already reflects licensing two town ambulances, each with power cots, stair chairs and other modern equipment.
For the Select Board, though, Chairwoman Molly Keegan said she worries about being built into a “loss position” as the financial numbers for the fire department get bigger and bigger, even if this will eventually be balanced by ambulance receipts paid by patients and their insurers.
In May 2023, voters put $402,307 in free cash to cover initial start-up costs of the Hadley A1, a Basic Life Support ambulance purchased from Northampton for $20,000 and which, since October 2023, has served as the backup to the private Action EMS ambulance that the town contracts with. Spanknebel said the department’s policy is that full-time staff responds to all EMS calls with Action EMS to provide support, advanced care in event of a major medical incident, and safe and timely packing of patients.
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Hadley also recently took ownership of what it is calling Hadley A2, a 2022 ambulance received from Adams Ambulance Service. “That ambulance is a $400,000 ambulance all day long,” Spanknebel said.
Board member Randy Izer said the big concern is the upfront cost and whether the town will be lucky to bring in the money to cover upgrades to the department. “It may not be a money-making venture for the town, but it could be a lifesaving venture,” Izer said.
The town is still in the midst of a six-month plan for licensing its Advanced Life Support level ambulance, to be used in either a secondary role or a primary role, in which ambulance receipts would come directly to the town. “That’s kind of the question right now, that’s the crystal ball we’re trying to figure out,” Spanknebel said,
Under one scenario, on July 1 the town would transition its ambulance to Advanced Life Support, pending approval from a doctor at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton that the paramedics have reached training minimums. Spanknebel said he is confident two paramedics will be able to operate immediately, and two other paramedics are “working feverishly” to get training through their work in Hatfield and for AMR.
The actual annual cash collections for Action EMS have averaged $699,260 over the past three years, Spanknebel said, but he believes the town could collect more money. Already, the Basic Life Support ambulance, in its first nine months of operation, collected $56,506, with another $20,000 outstanding.
But Advanced Life Support ambulance can get double that amount, at $1,500 or so per call, meaning 700 transports would bring in $1.05 million. At 850 calls, that ambulance would generate close to $1.28 million.
The call volume is also growing, with the 2,014 calls last year , a 20% increase from the 1,672 calls in 2023. The number of times when there are overlapping calls, meaning one to eight responses needed at the same time, also more than doubled, from 129 cases of this happening in 2023 to 266 cases of this happening in 2024.
“We were very surprised at how extremely busy it was this year,” Spanknebel said, adding that there were just 1,009 total calls in 2015.
Of the calls in 2024, 952 were fire-related and 1,062 were emergency medical calls.
Even with Action EMS in town, Hadley has had to build a relationship with Northampton to come into town periodically to respond to medical calls.
“I want the best possible patient care, the fastest patient care,” Spanknebel said.