There's about a week left for health care workers in Maine to get the COVID-19 shot in order to be fully vaccinated by the end of the month. That's when the Mills Administration will enforce a state mandate first announced in August. Among those required to get vaccinated are EMS workers. It's a system that's been understaffed for years, and some departments say the mandate is making the situation even worse.
Waldoboro EMS gets about 1,700 calls a year. Most are emergencies, but some are wellness checks on older residents in the community.
On a recent weekday morning, two crew members, Kevin LeCaptain and Jerrad Dinsmore, stopped by a secluded house to measure the clotting levels of a woman in her nineties.
LeCaptain and Dinsmore each put in more than 20 hours a week at Waldoboro EMS. That's on top of their full time jobs at other EMS departments or dispatch centers in other towns. It's common in Maine for EMS staffers to work for multiple departments which are all looking for help.
And Waldoboro EMS may soon need even more help. It already lost one worker who quit because of the state vaccine mandate, and could lose two more. It's a problem that keeps town manager Julie Keizer up at night.
"So we're a 24 hour service. If I lose three people who were putting in 40 hours or over, that's 120 hours I can't cover. In Lincoln County, we already have a stressed system," Keizer says.
That stress was evident recently when Waldoboro almost had to shut down service for a weekend because it didn't have the staff to cover. After the EMS director sent out a plea and the town offered an extra $5 an hour, they managed to pull together a bare minimum crew of two. Keizer says she supports vaccination and she understands why the state issued a mandate. But she says it has on-the-ground consequences that threaten the ability for some EMS services to function. About 200 miles north at Fort Fairfield Fire Rescue, Deputy Fire Chief Cody Fenderson is faced with a similar situation. He says he encouraged unvaccinated staff to get the shot. Two did. But eight quit.
"That was extremely frustrating," Fenderson says.
Fenderson says the vaccine mandate wasn't the only reason why some left, but it was a contributing factor. And now Fort Fairfield only has five full time staff available to fill 10 slots. Their roster of per diem workers all have full time jobs elsewhere, including other EMS departments that are facing shortages.
"Ya know, anybody who does ambulances is suffering. It’s – it’s tough. I'm not sure what we’re going to do and I don't know what the answer is," Fenderson says.
Staffing issues have plagued the EMS system for years. It's tough work that takes a lot of training and offers low pay. But some local officials say the mandate is exacerbating the issue, and not just in rural departments. Chris Thomson, the president of the Portland Firefighters Union, says he expects to lose eight workers out of roughly 200. That may not sounds like much, but those are full time positions that Thomson says will have to be filled by other employees who are already exhausted and working overtime.
"Ya know, the union encourages people to get their vaccine. And I personally got the vaccine. And we're not in denial of how serious the pandemic is," Thomson says. "But the firefighters and the nurses have been doing this for a year and half and I think that we've done it safely. And given 90 days to be forcibly do something is unreasonable and not wise. I think the only thing that threatens the health of public is short staffing the people that take care of them when they’re sick."
Thomson says EMS staff should be allowed to work even if they're not vaccinated because they wear PPE and are experts in infection prevention. But state Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck says departments could still lose staff if they're exposed to COVID and have to isolate or quarantine. He says the mandate is necessary to protect the public and workers, as well as limit the spread of the virus.
"Win-win scenarios are often talked about but seldom realized. So sure, you may have a situation where staffing concerns are a reality in communities. But for us, we do believe, the broader impact, the safer impact on our system is through vaccination," Sauschuck says.
Not all EMS departments are opposed to the mandate. Andrew Turcotte is the Fire Chief and Director of EMS for Westbrook. He says all of his 70 EMS workers are vaccinated except one. He doesn't see the mandate as being any different than the vaccine requirements to go to school or to enter the health care field.
"I think that we all have not only a social responsibility but a moral one. We chose to get into the health care field, and with that comes responsibilities and accountabilities. That includes ensuring that you're vaccinated," Turcotte says.
As the deadline to enforce the mandate approaches, it's unclear how many of the 5,600 licensed EMS workers in Maine are fully vaccinated. In mid-September, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety said the rate was between 86 and 90%. State officials declined to provide more recent data, saying it's currently being reviewed. Even if the overall vaccination rate is high, it doesn't change things for departments in towns like Waldoboro, where the loss of even one worker is a problem. EMS Director Richard Lash, who is 65, started pulling 120 hour work weeks over the past few months.
"I've told my town manager that we'll do the best we can do. But, you know, I can't continue to work 120 hours a week to fill shifts. I'm getting old. And I just can't keep doing that," Lash says.
Town Manager Julie Keizer says she's searching for options and coming up empty-handed. She's worried about emergency calls that may not get a timely response. And she's frustrated that the state, as she sees it, has no back-up plan to help local responders.
