S.A.F.E.R. Board of Directors

OFFICIAL MEETING MINUTES SOUTH AREA FIRE & EMERGENCY RESPONSE DISTRICT Board of Directors Meeting Tuesday, July 9, 2024 @ 17:30 A. Call to Order The meeting of the South Area Fire & Emergency Response District Board of Directors was called to order at 17:30 by SAFER Chairman Mark Maloney. Members Present Board of Directors – Cronin, Langenhahn (* arrived at 17:31), Maloney, Opall, and Schaefer were all present. Also present: Village of Rib Mountain – Administrator Rhoden; Village of Weston – Administrator Gebert; EMS|MC Client Services Rosin; SAFER – Fire Chief Finke, Deputy Fire Chief Lang, Director of Medical Services Gordon- Haessly, Battalion Chief Meyers (via Zoom), Captain Lohman (via Zoom), and Administrative Assistant Latimer. One media guest present. B. Correspondence/Comments from the public on issues related to the SAFER District None C. Consent Items Board of Directors approval of prior meeting minutes from June 11, 2024, and approval of expenditures and receipts from June 2024. Motioned by Schaefer to approve prior meeting minutes from June 11, 2024, and expenditures and receipts from June 2024. Second by Opall. Motion carried 4:0. D. Business Items Presentation on Ambulance Billing from EMS|MC. - (* Langenhahn arrived). - Chief Finke said as the Board is aware we’ve had fairly significant issues with EMS revenue recovery in 2024, and I asked Client Services Rosin from EMS|MC formerly LifeQuest to give a presentation to the Board and you can ask him any questions. I know there are a lot of questions and Deputy Chief Lang and I had a lot of questions too, and we met with Rosin 30 minutes before the meeting here. The revenue continues to not look good; we’ve collected $7,000.00 for this month so far and we need to average $121,000.00 a month to hit our goals and we are still close to $225,000.00 behind as of right now. Rosin is going to go through some of the reasons for that and talk about what’s going to happen over the next few months. - Maloney said there’s actually no reasons that we should be out of any money, your company should be big enough, you should write a check, get it into our account, and then we’ll work out the balance later. - Rosin said we can certainly put that request in. I’m on your team, that’s why I’m here to try and shed some light in terms of what has been happening, and what the plan is going forward. A couple of main reasons why the revenue is lagging, number one we have had a staffing issue, which is not your problem. You have $761,000.00 that has been billed out that hasn’t been collected yet, you will collect on that. Claims were going out the door, unfortunately not in the volume they should have been going out the door. Today claims are in and out, what gets sent in today should be going out. Though we’ve looked and so far this month, we haven’t charged out anything and I need to follow up on that. Revenue wise as the Chief indicated, last year we collected about $1,487,000.00, through today we’ve collected $555,000.00 of gross revenue. - Cronin said everything up through June 30th has been billed out to the appropriate insurance. - Rosin said I don’t know the exact dates, but what our team has said to us. There haven’t been any charges added for the month of July. - Schaefer said the question is you came up here to meet with us and you didn’t check that before you came here. - Rosin said the reason for the visit is to discuss the lack of revenue. - Schaefer said and the lack of performance by your company. - Rosin said even with the runs you had from this month, you wouldn’t have had any revenue. I do need to check why those haven’t been billed out yet. - Schaefer said that’s the snowballing issue, stuff doesn’t get out, we don’t get collected and we get behind. We need to be absolutely current. - Maloney asked how many dollars are we behind right now? - Chief Finke said according to my board we’re $211,000.00 behind, Rosin probably has a little more updated information. - Rosin said I have $170,000.00 which is based on last year. - Maloney said this is what happens and gets cloudy. It’s like a shell game, how big are you guys? - Rosin said in terms of what? Clients, we have 1,500. - Maloney said is everyone behind, not just a few, everybody. Can you imagine what an aggressive accountant could do with that money for two to three months? We’re talking some serious money, $175,000.00, pay it out, it’s here, it’s got to be sitting somewhere. - Chief Finke said it never sits in a bank account owned by them (EMS|MC), it comes directly to us. The issue like Rosin said earlier is the billing went out late. - Schaefer said what is the company going to do to make us whole on the interest that we lost, because that would’ve been sitting in the bank earning 5%+ interest, and what is your action plan to make sure this stuff is billed and follow through on, and what are you doing in the future to make sure new billings don’t fall through the crack? - Rosin said Customer Success Executive Schraeder will be monitoring those and she is working with an OPA on our team who monitors those daily. - Chief Finke said to follow up with Schaefer’s question about what we are doing, internally I look at the dashboard two to three times a day now to see what’s coming through there. We don’t have anything officially set up, we’re talking and meeting with Schraeder once a week to stay on top of the issues and where they’re at. Rosin and Schraeder in my opinion are doing everything they can, I think what happened is that LifeQuest was a small company and they got bought out by a massive company. LifeQuest cared very much about SAFER and all of their services in the past, and I think EMS|MC doesn’t care as much and the top four or five people probably don’t know our name. In my opinion, that’s what happens when a large company takes over. - Rosin said they probably took on more than they should’ve taken on in terms of buying acquisitions. There are some such as your own who have lagged, and that’s not acceptable. - Maloney asked are we able to measure what is collected in these last few months versus what we used to collect on a monthly basis, same time period? We are at the mercy of them, of what they say could be collected and could not be collected and it’s all this should and would and could, but there’s no guarantees. - Chief Finke said there is a lot of moving pieces, that’s part of the business I would say. Administrative Assistant Latimer did send out an email to her Admin group, and everybody except for one service that has had their billing taken over by EMS|MC from LifeQuest and Andres, they’re all in the same boat that we are in. - Maloney asked who else in this area is with EMS|MC? - Chief Finke said Wausau Fire, but the biggest one Madison Fire said they’re behind. - Opall said how long can we put up with this before it starts hurting operational revenue? - Chief Finke said another 90 days. As far as the interest goes it is hurting us now, the biggest issue I’ve had throughout this year is the always lagging behind and are we going to get it? Do we have to brownout a position or two to offset what this is costing us, I have not done that because I’ve been told it’s going to come.  - Schaefer said our interest becomes lagging and maybe what we need to do is get our brain trust within our financial arms and look at this and figure out a number that we are out and send a bill. Action: No action taken. Discussion and possible action on RFP for New Ambulance Billing Agency. - Chief Finke said I did do a little bit of searching for other options and we had a webinar with two services with the past week. There are not as many out there as there used to be. We did a webinar with a company called I-Med which they’re not going to work out. The other company we just met with yesterday Pintler Billing out of Montana is a small company and they struck me as very much like LifeQuest was and they have 50 clients currently. They are a small office and do everything manually like LifeQuest used to do. I had to send them some further information and they are going to get us a quote and they said they are more than capable of taking on a department our size, their largest agency runs about 10,000 calls a year, and they have some small rural Montana agencies also, and they do not have any accounts in Wisconsin currently but they do have them all over the country. - Deputy Chief Lang said one of the nice things about that company when we interviewed with them, one of the people was the CEO. Like Chief Finke said the CEO of EMS|MC, they don’t know who we are, they don’t care. - Maloney said we’re canvassing all areas and all different departments? - Chief Finke said yes and we’re going to dig into it a little bit more, when Latimer reached out that was my initial plan was to see who everybody else is using and everybody that responded was EMS|MC. Wisconsin was a very high user of LifeQuest, because they were local, they were good, and they had spectacular customer service, but that has changed with the acquisition. - Schaefer said do you want to issue an RFP with a return by a specific day, do you want to be more structured that way? - Chief Finke said we can, the other thing the Board needs to be aware of, our contract was with LifeQuest through 2027. I’ll get a copy of the contract and see where we’re at. The other item I wanted to ask the Board about is maybe approaching Wausau Fire and if we work together, we could hire two or three people and we could do them internally. - Schaefer said at a minimum a $100,000.00 software system. Action: Motioned by Langenhahn to send out an RFP for New Ambulance Billing Agency. Second by Schaefer. Motion carried 5:0. Discussion and possible action on RFP for Audit Services. - Chief Finke said we are up for a new contract for Audit Services, we had a three-year with Hawkins Ash, do we want to approach Hawkins Ash and ask them for a quote for three more years or do we want to go out for RFP for multiple different agencies? - Opall asked are we happy with them? - Chief Finke said yes, they’ve been good. - Schaefer said start by saying we’re talking about an RFP, we’re going to give you a chance. If it comes back somewhere close to what we’ve already got, otherwise if it’s a big number then you go out for an RFP. Action: No action taken. End of Month Budget review. - Chief Finke said the up-to-date budget is in your packet and as far as expenditures we’re running a bit under and I’m anticipating, granted we’re only halfway through the year and a lot of things can change, but approximately $50,000.00 under budget on expenditures. Attorney Referral. - None E. Staff Reports Report from Fire Chief  - Fire Chief Finke said we have the open position that we had posted that has half a day remaining and we currently have three applicants who are all firefighter/Paramedic, two internal and one external. - Ladder truck we expect delivery in two to four weeks. - We’ll be burning the house in Rib Mountain in July or August. Report from Deputy Fire Chief - Deputy Fire Chief Lang said the report is in your packet and I’ll give you the highlights. - Personnel report: We have a signed ratified contract with Local 5452 through the end of 2026. - EMS & Fire Incidents: EMS and fire responses are there. - Training: Training hours are listed with topics. - Apparatus: Nothing to report. - Fire Prevention/Public Education: Activities are listed. - Grants/Projects: We submitted the DNR Grant for $10,000.00. F. Business Items 18:18 Motion by Schaefer to adjourn into closed session pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 19.85(1)(e) deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons require a closed session, to wit: possible merging of departments and updates with other area municipalities. Second by Cronin. Roll-call vote: NAME: Aye Nay Cronin X Langenhahn X Maloney X Opall X Schaefer X Motion carried 5:0. 18:40 Motion by Cronin to reconvene to open session. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 5:0. G. Remarks from the Board of Directors to set the next meeting date, as well as discuss items for the next meeting agenda. - Next meeting scheduled for Tuesday, August 13, 2024 at SAFER Station 1. - Cronin has nothing. - Langenhahn has nothing. - Opall has nothing. - Schaefer has nothing. - Maloney has nothing. H. Adjourn Motion by Opall to adjourn. Second by Langenhahn. Motion carried 5:0. Maloney adjourned at 18:41