By Jamie L. Costa
The Eagle-Tribune
PLAISTOW, N,H. — The Plaistow Fire Department’s regional paramedic intercept program is gearing up for its second year serving towns in the southern New Hampshire community.
The Board of Selectmen Monday night authorized a $1.4 million grant contract with the New Hampshire Department of Justice that will go before Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the Executive Council for approval next month. The grant will help fund 80% of the program’s 2026 operating budget with the remainder funded by contributing towns.
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When the Advance Life Support (ALS) program, previously operated by Exeter Hospital, was disbanded last year, the Plaistow Fire Department launched its own program with a $2 million grant from the hospital and the donation of its two intercept vehicles and related equipment.
The program operated in its first year free of charge for participating towns with the knowledge that, as the program continued, communities would start to absorb some of the operational costs until the program was 100% funded by those using the services, with no cost to the Town of Plaistow.
So as not to overload the towns and their budgeting process, taking over the cost of the program will happen gradually over several years, said Fire Chief Chris Knutsen.
“Ultimately, they should be paying 100% of this but it’s like... this is a whole new vision for me,” he said. “If a town wants a public service, they have to pay for it but if you look at it on a global scale, what we provide is no different than a hospital putting in another wing and making the patients pay for that.”
Where there is a gap, towns will be expected to fill it but not without looking to the state and private donors first.
“We want to see what the system will generate before asking people for money,” Knutsen said. “As we move into 2026, we’ll start looking at the 2027 budget and start putting out information to those towns about what it will start costing as we move into Year 3.”
If towns choose to opt out of the program or move to a different model for services, Knutsen said he will look at what the other participating towns can absorb while relying on private donors to keep the program running in the long term.
“We won’t really go down that path of renewing agreements (with towns) until the first of the year, but all the towns are gonna stay on from what I’m hearing,” Knutsen said. “There will be a slight increase in our user fee, but we’ll keep the pay-per-use model at least for Year 2.”
For towns without their own ambulance services or paramedics on staff, the intercept vehicles, stationed in both Plaistow and Brentwood, provide life-saving emergency services to neighboring communities where advanced medical care is required to protect human life.
As part of the town contracts with the intercept program, EMT training opportunities are available at no cost to the 18 participating towns, which include, but are not limited to, Atkinson, Hampstead, Sandown, Brentwood Exeter, Kingston, East Kingston, Newton, Fremont, Hampton Falls, North Hampton, Newfields and Stratham.
The Town of Plaistow does not benefit directly from the services and instead acts as a liaison and dispatch center.
“It’ll cost substantially less than $2 million to operate the program next year,” Knutsen said. “We will probably have some funding left over.”
In its first year, Knutsen had to hire additional staff, purchase additional equipment and outfit the intercept vehicles to provide the needed services. With the program already established going into its second year, the cost to operate is anticipated to be far less.
Looking ahead, Knutsen said he hopes to purchase a third intercept vehicle and hire additional staff to operate services out of another location in the region. The cost to do so will be around $900,000, the bulk of it needed for employee salaries and benefits.
“We are constantly looking at the needs and where we have shortcomings,” he said. “Long-term wise, once everything is settled and we know the towns are in it for the long haul, it will make it a little easier to decide if we’re going to buy something, build something or rent something for a specific town.”
Since the program launched in March, it’s been well received by the community and earned a lot of positive feedback from participating fire departments, both in relation to response times and the overall reconfiguration of dispatch services, Knutsen said.
When Exeter Hospital announced in September 2024 it’d be discontinuing the program, towns in Rockingham County relying on those services panicked over who would provide them with ambulances and 24-hour paramedic-level emergency care.
The discontinuation of services was estimated to cost affected communities and taxpayers $110,000 in the next budget cycle to establish their own ambulance programs, contract with a third-party provider or hire their own paramedics.
In anticipation of the public health crisis, out-of-state private agencies began offering services while fire chiefs and departments worked to brainstorm other ways to provide countywide ALS services to their communities.
Seeing the need, Knutsen stepped up to the challenge and volunteered to organize a similar program, bring in and contract with towns in need of services, reconfigure the way those services are dispatched and manage all administrative and monetary responsibilities of the program.
However, none of it would be possible without the cooperation and support of his fellow fire chiefs.
“It’s been really good,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from different communities.”
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