08-08-18 Personnel and Finance (#2)

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II ®CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK collections and everything. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the work of the billers. Our billers take pride in handling, very professionally, a really complicated billing process. They deal with CMS, Insurance Agencies and companies in order for us to get that reimbursement. They go through a lot to make sure they maximize those reimbursements. Typically by the time it actually gets to the Legal Department, we've already worked with all the parties well in advance for quite some time. We even allow payment plans as we know that some folks are on fixed incomes. So there are forty-seven(47) Fire Fighters and four and a half(4.5) civilians in that fund that are paid out. He went on, We want to give you guys a pie chart (referencing a slide in the presentation) that shows salaries and benefits. Those take up a vast majority of our overall budget. We also have supplies and, as you can see, we are attempting to make sure our operational budget stays as flat as it possibly can be. Having said that, under services there is a bit of a high increase. That is because our allocations have gone up significantly this ye and so that is a large portion of what you are seeing in that increase. Also on Capital, you see an increase because of the Station Nine (9) Bond we floated in order for us to be able to build the new Station Nine (9). That was an increase in capital that we will begin payment on in 2019. He continued, I also want to point this (referencing a slide in the presentation) out. The year to year comparison shows the different areas in which we pay. The vast majority of the cost of the Fire Department is wrapped up in salaries and benefits.Those increases over the four(4)year span reflect those changes in the CBA with the Fire Fighter's Local Union that is negotiated through contract. This Year I believe it was a two point two percent(2.2%)pay raise plus a couple of other fringe benefit pays added into those raises. As you can see in supplies, our total costs are very similar to actually that of 2016. With Service and Capital & Debt, as I just mentioned, the new Station Nine(9)Bond was moved up a little bit and allocations and insurance went up significantly. He went on, Overall staffing changes that we have requested this ye include two (2) positions for the community Paramedicine Program. That program is something we just began to pilot this year. We presented it to the mayor and he liked the idea of it.Basically it is addressing the frequent users of our EMS system. Typically speaking, those are folks that have fewer resources, they are elderly folks that have difficulty navigating the system, or somebody that just doesn't know how to sign up for Medicare or Medicaid. So what we attempt to do with these community paramedics is, we've got one (1) right now and she just started seeing patients last month. She identifies folks that are frequent users of our system and she addresses these issues by going to their home and sees what she can possibly do to minimize the impact on our system. If there is an easy fix, she looks to do that. We modeled this program off of programs that are currently being utilized in Austin, Texas, Dallas, Fort Worth, Tuscan, Raleigh, Minneapolis, and they have all had tremendous success. We anticipate,after just seeing patients over the course of a month and a half, the one (1) Fire Fighter doing this already has a full patient load and probably is over-burdened at this point. We talked to the folks in Arlington, Texas and they've been doing the program for couple of years now, and they actually limit the number of patients to twenty (20)per community paramedic. Otherwise, the individuals become overwhelmed. We are requesting to make this a permanent program and, starting in 2019, there would be two (2) additional Fire Fighters that are already paramedics with our department. He continued, The cost associated with that is approximately $200,000. That would be the cost of the two(2)experienced paramedics running that program.That is salaries,benefits,and everything EXCELLENCE I ACCOUNTABILITY I INNOVATION I INCLUSION I EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 1227 W.Jefferson Bvld I South Bend,Indiana 466011 p 574.235.9221 If 574.235.9173 TTD 574.235.55671 www.southbendin.gov 12