Austin-Travis County EMS being stretched thin due to staffing, COVID-19

(Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

By Delilah Alvarado

(AUSTIN, Texas) The Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services have concerns over staffing and the pandemic as the city budget for the fiscal year 2021-22 is about to be discussed.

Draft documents revealed the city of Austin’s proposed fiscal year 2021-22 budget shows a $1.3 million decrease in funding for Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, according to KXAN.

A paramedic with ATCEMS told of the hardships of working as an EMT in an anonymous message to KXAN.

“Coming off my third 24 hour EMS shift within five days is getting harder and harder. I’m burnt out. We all are,” the statement read in part. “With call volume skyrocketing and not enough medics to respond, a career I once loved, once proud to talk about, has made a turn for the worse.”

Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services Association President Selena Xie told KXAN ATCEMS is short by about 110 people out of 600 workers. She said the pandemic and the winter storm caused some people to leave the industry.

She noted that the rise of the delta variant has also made the staff shortage more apparent.

“We’re seeing that being reflected in our call volume, which just increases the stress and the workload on our medics who are already feeling very stretched thin right now,” she said.

As the FY22 budget becomes finalized, Xie said the Association is asking the Austin City Council to provide funding resources to fill in the gaps of the paramedic coverage.

“When we add an ambulance, we add 12 medics per ambulance. But our first ambulances were not staffed that way, and we’ve never backfilled for those positions,” she said. “And so when we are at a time of crisis, when record numbers of people leave and when we can’t hire, we have a huge staffing shortage. And so while….there’s not that much we can do right now, we can make sure this never happens again in the future.”

The Austin City Council is addressing the proposed FY22 budget and property tax rate during a work session on Tuesday.

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