HAMILTON — The town is relying on Lyons Ambulance to take patients to the hospital, while police provide services as the first responders to medical emergencies.
Hamilton's ambulances have been sitting idle for nearly three months after the state began investigating medical-training records that were questioned.
Since then, the equipment from one of the ambulances has been loaded into the department's Ford Expedition, which police Chief Walter Cullen recently told selectmen is on the road 24 hours a day.
It's normally the first response vehicle on the scene at a medical call. Like all police officers in the state, the one behind the wheel of the Expedition has been trained as a first responder, to do such things as administer oxygen, assist with childbirth and provide initial wound care.
Meanwhile, Lyons has handled ambulance service since the town's ambulances were grounded in September. Ambulances are dispatched either from the company's headquarters in the old Danvers fire station on Maple Street or from the company's garage on Brimbal Avenue in Beverly.
Pat Roselli, a consultant the selectmen hired in recent weeks, said he's absolutely confident police are adequate as first responders.
"The safety of the community is of the highest priority," Roselli said.
He was hired to help determine the future of Hamilton's medical responses, but his first job is making sure the officers are handling responses properly now.
Roselli was a paramedic for 12 years and the director of Northeast Regional EMS, a nonprofit coordinating company for another dozen. He's been consulting ambulance service providers since 1996.
While Roselli said he's just begun analyzing Lyons' response times, Cullen has repeatedly assured residents it is adequate.
Hamilton is one of only a few communities in the state in which the police department runs the municipal ambulance service. The others are towns on Martha's Vineyard, Barre and Billerica. The state police also run an ambulance in New Braintree.
The town ambulance service was budgeted to feed $150,000 into the Hamilton coffers this year.
By the time it was suspended, on Sept. 24, it had generated $49,180 in revenue. The ambulance service last year brought in $172,765.
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