By Jon Harris
The Buffalo News
ALDEN, N.Y. — The Town of Alden’s longtime ambulance provider has agreed to continue responding to calls into next week while it negotiates with town officials over coverage through the end of the year, when a new emergency medical services agency is expected to take over.
That comes after the town this week informed longtime contracted ambulance provider, Lancaster Volunteer Ambulance Corps (LVAC), that it had decided to sign a new contract with another EMS provider starting Jan. 1.
| MORE: Data versus Darwin with Todd Stout
The problem: LVAC’s contract with the Town of Alden expired at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, which created immediate concern about a potential gap in ambulance coverage in the town for the rest of the year.
But, officials said Wednesday, they’re making progress on a short-term solution until the new provider, Mercy Flight EMS, is ready to start.
Erie County launches ambulance service in rural towns where medical gaps exist
The county has purchased five ambulances, painted in a distinctive blue, orange, white and yellow. The first one, being housed at the Colden Volunteer Fire Company, goes into service on Monday.
In a statement, Town of Alden Supervisor Colleen M. Pautler said the town believes LVAC is contractually obligated to provide ambulance services through at least Oct. 31 . The town is prepared to “seek judicial intervention if LVAC refuses to honor that contractual obligation,” Pautler said.
The hope is it won’t come to that.
Pautler said LVAC’s counsel has assured the town’s attorney that ambulance services will be continued through at least Monday. Further, LVAC’s attorney told the town that LVAC is interested in meeting to discuss a contract extension through Dec. 31 , Pautler said.
LVAC, a nonprofit, has served as the Town of Alden’s contracted ambulance provider since 2016. The agency responds to 780 to 800 emergency calls in the town annually, said Bernard Jerozal IV, chief of operations for LVAC.
Jerozal said late Wednesday that LVAC will continue to cover the Town of Alden until Tuesday.
Mercy Flight to grow with $2 million acquisition of Finger Lakes EMS provider
Mercy Flight said Wednesday it is acquiring Clifton Springs -based Finger Lakes Ambulance EMS Inc. , which covers about 1,200 square miles across Monroe, Ontario, Seneca, Wayne and Yates counties.
“We are planning on meeting with them and hope to come to a resolution in the best interests of the public’s safety,” Jerozal said, noting, however, that LVAC was saddened to hear the town threaten legal action against a longtime partner.
Jerozal said LVAC and the town were in negotiations for the past nine months to try to reach a new contract. LVAC submitted its most recent proposal to the town in August and was expecting to discuss that proposal Monday evening, which is when the town informed LVAC that it was choosing another provider, he said.
“They just said that they decided to go in a different direction,” Jerozal said.
That different direction led them to choose Mercy Flight EMS, the ground ambulance division of Cheektowaga -based Mercy Flight. The ambulance division already provides service for Genesee County, Niagara County, Orleans County, the towns of Hamlin and Concord, the village of Springville and, after the recent acquisition of Finger Lakes Ambulance, several counties in the Finger Lakes region.
Mercy Flight Executive Vice President Scott Wooton said Wednesday that a contract is not yet drafted, but the nonprofit has been given “the indication that we are going to be chosen to replace LVAC in Alden.”
‘This is a moneymaker': Tonawanda says scaled-back ambulance corps to launch in January
Reimbursement from private and public insurers will outpace the town’s cost for its ambulances, medical equipment, gasoline and the EMTs who will provide this service, Tonawanda officials calculated.
While it is not finalized, Wooton said Alden has offered Mercy Flight EMS a place to station a dedicated ambulance within the town. But, he said, it is not as though Mercy Flight EMS already has a unit “staffed up and ready to go that we can just plug in there” immediately, so the provider is hoping a solution will be ironed out between LVAC and the town for the next couple of months.
“As a resident of the Town of Alden, I’m hopeful that there can be either a safety-net or a short-term contract between the town and LVAC, just to try to make that a smooth handoff of the baton,” Wooton said.
Jerozal said LVAC has continuously told Town of Alden officials that it can’t afford to provide ambulance service for the rest of the year without a contract.
“We can’t just continuously provide this for free with the way insurance reimbursements are going down,” he said. “Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements are already at such a low level that it costs us more money to go take a 911 call in the Town of Alden than we receive. So we told them we’d be willing to have further talks or whatnot, but we can’t just provide a service for free anymore.”
The loss of the contract in the Town of Alden hurts LVAC as an organization. LVAC responded to about 7,800 calls last year, with around 10% of those in Alden.
Last year, Jerozal said, LVAC logged revenue of $4.4 million and expenses of $4.35 million – 63% of costs were salaries and the rest goes toward benefits, insurance and mechanical needs of the fleet. LVAC has 98 EMS professionals.
Jerozal said LVAC is able to pay all of its bills, but only has about $1,000 to $2,000 leftover each month that it tries to save. But LVAC had to replace its roof on its building last year, a $100,000 cost that forced the nonprofit to get a loan. In addition, he said, LVAC has two ambulances nearing the end of their service lives, and a new ambulance now costs in the ballpark of $250,000.
With the news in the Town of Alden, Jerozal said LVAC will be evaluating the impact over the next 50 days and will decide whether “we need to reshape our operation.”
© 2026 The Buffalo News (Buffalo, N.Y.).
Visit www.buffalonews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.