New state paramedic scholarships aim to attract talent to field as EMS battles staff shortages
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- There are an average of more than 700,000 calls for an ambulance in Minnesota each year. But now providers are calling for help, too: They need more workers.
State data show in 2021, nearly 3,000 more providers left the emergency medical services field than entered it, underscoring the shortages. Those workforce deficits plus higher demand create challenges, said Susan Long, vice president of Allina Health EMS.
"When you have that kind of turnover of people leaving the field, it's difficult to make up, to catch up, especially with our demographic shift of fewer people looking for work," she explained. "So most EMS agencies I know are struggling to some degree or another with recruitment and retention."
The state legislature this session passed a program to tackle workforce woes. A new paramedic scholarship will support 600 grants worth $5,000 a piece to assist Minnesotans enrolling in training at qualifying community and technical colleges.
"It's not enough to fill all of our challenges that are out there, but it will certainly help all of our services have a better pool of individuals to choose from," Long said of the scholarships, which will impact enrollment in the fall of 2024.
In the meantime, she said providers are playing catch up to fill the jobs, which is an issue impacting not just Minnesota but the nation. Some EMS agencies are paying for scholarships of their own to boost their ranks.
Lawmakers also approved funding to expand EMS courses in high schools, creating a pathway for more emergency medical technicians.
EMTs have fewer skills than paramedics—the highest level of training—but are just as essential, Long said.
Yet nearly 65% of the EMTs leaving the profession are under 40, according to the Minnesota Emergency Medical Services Regulatory Board.
Low wages are cited as a reason for exits, which mirrors national trends. Nearly one-third of all EMTs in the country quit in 2021. Low reimbursement rates to providers from Medicaid and Medicare contribute to that problem, Long told WCCO.
'The reimbursements do not match the actual cost for what we provide for those patients," she said. "When we bill a patient, we're getting 32 cents on the dollar."
The shortage can also affect how soon an ambulance arrives. Life-threatening calls are the top priority and sometimes surrounding agencies outside of a service area need to help.
"As we see services not being able to staff their ambulances during the day, you're relying on your neighbors to come in and respond to those calls," explained Mark Jones, executive director of the Minnesota Rural Health Association, "So where you may have had an ambulance five minutes away from you, it may now be 15 or 20 or 25 [minutes]. In the northern part of the state where I live, it could be 25, 30 minutes for the neighbor ambulance to get there."
Jones believes the paramedic scholarships will remove some barriers to entry. Applications open in January and will be disbursed for the fall 2024 academic year. The program does not cover training for EMTs.
"Loan repayment is fantastic but paramedic scholarships on the front side is more of a recruitment tool for us," he said.