THE VILLAGE BOARD APPROVES CONTRACT WITH NYU LANGONE HOSPITAL TO PROVIDE AMBULANCE SERVICES TO THE VILLAGE OF FLORAL PARK 

          After discussions at the last few Village Board meetings, the Village Board approved a contract with NYU Langone Hospital (“NYU”) to provide ambulance service to the Village as “first due”. The Village volunteer Rescue Company will continue to provide ambulance coverage as “second due”, and the Nassau County Ambulance will be “third due.”

          This decision has been made after public discussions and presentations made at the last few Village Board meetings. These public discussions started with the November 15th and December 6th Village Board Meetings and included the presentations made by the Chief of the Department and NYU at the January 3rd Village Board Meeting. 

          The contract with NYU is based on the recommendation of all of the Chiefs of the Fire Department and the leadership of the volunteer Rescue Company to have NYU provide “1st due” ambulance services to our residents. This service will include an ambulance stationed within the Village 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The NYU ambulance will be staffed by a NYS certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and NYS certified EMT-Paramedic.

          The two primary reasons for this change are 1) to ensure our residents have access to immediate Advanced Life Support (“ALS”) care as we currently do not have any ALS certified personnel and 2) the steady decline in new volunteers joining the Rescue Company.  Neither of these reasons are new, unique to Floral Park, or solvable within a reasonable timeframe due to the extensive (i.e., hours required) training that must be completed for any new volunteer to become certified.  

          To be clear, our volunteers in the Rescue Company will still play a vital role in servicing our residents. As stated, they will be “second due” when the NYU ambulance is being utilized for a previous call.  In 2022 there were over 250 such instances of back-to-back calls.

          The Village Board has formulated a Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQ”) which we published last week.  We intend to continue to update that document if new questions arise.  Click the following link for the most recent version of the FAQs. NYU Frequently Asked Questions

          We would like to thank Chief Dodson and the rest of the Chiefs for the time and effort that they have put into this proposal.  Additionally, we would like to thank Chief Dodson and Ex-Captain Larry King for presenting their views on the proposal at various civic organizations over the past few weeks.

          Click the following link for NYU’s Presentation. NYU Langone Presentation 

If you have any comments or questions about this new service that is not addressed in the FAQs, please send your comments to [email protected].