Due to low staffing and lack of work availability, Peterborough Fire and Rescue will not handle ambulance transfers from Monadnock Community Hospital (MCH) to nearby facilities such as Catholic Medical Center in Manchester for non-life-threatening situations.

According to Fire Chief Ed Walker, the department will no longer handle transfers related to patients experiencing mild sickness, infections and bone fractures, known as routine transfers. Instead, Walker stated the department will accept a transfer if the patient is “suffering a truly critical injury or illness who, without receiving immediate life-saving surgical or medical interventions not available at MCH has a significant risk of mortality."

According to Walker, the department’s decision to relinquish routine transfer duties stems from the department’s lack of staff and their availability. Currently, the department consists of five full-time paramedics, approximately 35 part-time EMTs and three part-time paramedics, all of whom work full-time day jobs on top of their rescue duties. Due to the staffing and availability issues, Walker said it’s in the department’s best interest to conserve its resources and strictly focus on 911 calls related to life-threatening issues. Routine transfers from MCH to nearby facilities, which could take up to five hours to complete, were too time-consuming for the short staff to handle, he said. 

“It’s important we maintain our 911 service. We will continue to treat patients with true medical emergencies like heart attacks and strokes,” said Walker. “Routine transfers are not our problem; it’s the hospital’s problem to move those patients. We are struggling with low staff, the routine transfers are really putting a burden on us. We really can’t afford to be tied up for that amount of time and expect to fulfill our 911 services”

According to Walker, the department does not have a set number of staff they would like to have in order to go back to doing routine transfers for MCH.

Despite the department’s small staff, Walker said this does not put a dent in the town’s long-term plans to build a new fire station.

“[The current facility] is unsafe and unhealthy and it isn’t big enough to house our apparatus and administrative office,” said Walker. “We still need to have a fire station and a facility that provides for the health and safety of our department.”

At last year’s Town Meeting, Peterborough voters approved a $1.3 million bond to design and engineer a new fire station on Elm Street, which Walker said has been in the works for over 20 years. Additionally, the town approved allocating $700,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to the project. The decision to approve the design funds came after town had been considering a $23 million municipal campus project, but that idea was set aside due to concerns over size and cost and because the bond would have put Peterborough over its state-mandated debt limit.

Going forward, Monadnock Community Hospital will be responsible for finding a new EMT provider to deal with routine transfers. According to Laura Gingras, MCH’s vice president of philanthropy and community relations, the hospital is open-minded to short-term agreements and long-term contracts with local EMT providers to assist in routine transfer, although she would not provide any potential providers’ names. 

At the moment, if a patient requires a routine transfer to another facility, Gingras said hospital staff have to call nearby departments until one is available to assist. She said the situation is forcing the hospital to be resilient.

“We are working every day and doing everything in our power to take care of our patients,” said Gingras. “We are reaching out to other providers and try to piece it together… but right now, we are dealing with it on a case-by-case basis.”