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Emergency medicine responders meet with Becca Balint to talk rural health bottlenecks

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vermont, speaks during a discussion the challenges faced by first responders at Milton Rescue in Milton on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. . Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

By Olivia GiegerPublished Oct 21, 2026, 6:42 PMUpdated Oct 22, 20264 min read

A woman in a rust-colored sweater gestures while speaking at a meeting with several people around a table.

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vermont, speaks during a discussion the challenges faced by first responders at Milton Rescue in Milton on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. . Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

" data-large-file="https://vtdigger.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/balint-rescue-6-20261021-1200x798.jpg" /> U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vermont, speaks during a discussion the challenges faced by first responders at Milton Rescue in Milton on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. . Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

MILTON — U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., wanted to see how heavy a stretcher is. She got some help lifting it out of the back of one of Milton’s retired ambulances as part of her Wednesday visit with the Chittenden County town’s emergency medicine providers.

The ambulance was old and without the now-standard hydraulic lift that lowers stretchers out of the back of the truck. Milton had just retired the old ambulance after waiting three years — and paying nearly half a million dollars — for the new, state-of-the-art replacement, according to Town Manager Chris Taylor. A tour inside the old and new trucks closed out her hour-long visit with the rural emergency medicine squad.

Nearly a dozen Milton EMTs and paramedics joined Balint, her staff and Milton town executives to discuss the biggest challenges emergency medicine providers in Vermont face. With her visit, Balint aimed to underscore and understand the unique challenges rural emergency medicine providers are facing and what the federal government can do to support these municipal efforts.

Chief among the providers’ concerns were all the ways that people turn to 911 as a way to address social problems such as mental health crises, food insecurity and housing issues.

“I think the overwhelming theme was that EMS providers in these rural areas are responding, certainly to medical emergencies, but they are basically the people who are filling the gaps for community services that aren’t adequate enough,” Balint said in a subsequent interview with VTDigger.

“Are (patients) starting to view you all as their primary care provider?” Balint asked paramedics during the afternoon roundtable. The room pulsed with nods and paramedics’ eyes lit up.

Balint said she suspects more Vermonters are forgoing preventative care and relying on emergency responders as Medicaid tightens its eligibility and federal support for marketplace insurance plans shrink. Milton’s first responders confirmed that they often are the primary point of contact people in rural parts of the state have with the healthcare system.

Patients know that they will be able to speak to a provider within minutes rather than waiting weeks or more for a primary care appointment, said Sean McCann, chief of the Milton medical response team.

The team also often responds to health emergencies that primary care could have prevented, they said. One Milton Rescue team member mentioned caring for patients who forgo prescriptions in order to pay their taxes and bills first. Others mentioned rural patients who simply can’t get to the pharmacy or the clinic for preventative care.

“We do a lot more than clinical care,” McCann told Balint.

But treating an ambulance and the emergency department as the first line of defense can introduce undue costs for the patient — many of whom are elderly and on fixed incomes — and for the healthcare system as a whole, where in-hospital care is some of the most expensive.

“For our state, you can’t talk about pre-hospital without talking about the hospital,” Katie Escobedo, a full-time paramedic in Milton, said, referring to the one trauma center in the state, UVM Medical Center. As the hospital tries to shrink its staff and number of beds, the emergency department cannot admit patients into the hospital as quickly, Escobedo said. When the emergency department gets backed up, people leave and call 911. She cited a misconception that arriving at the hospital in an ambulance might fasttrack a patient to seeing a provider.

“There’s just a huge backup, especially in our lovely little state of Vermont, because we do have that one big University of Vermont (Medical Center), and everything is branched off of that,” Escobedo said.

U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vermont, left, listens as Samuel Hayford, standing, speaks about the challenges first responders face at Milton Rescue in Milton on Wednesday, October 21, 2026. . Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

One way of addressing that would be to deploy more EMS providers into the community to treat patients where they are — whether that’s at home or on the street. It’s something that the Brattleboro Rescue Inc. emergency responders have put in practice and Milton is evaluating ways to implement too, according to Taylor, the town manager.

Medicare, however, only reimburses emergency responders for transporting the patient to the hospital, not for treatment. It’s an issue Balint is trying to address through a bill she and U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., have jointly reintroduced. The bill would shift payment models to reimburse for treatment, instead of transportation.

Balint also hopes she can use her seat on a House anti-trust committee to address the expense and wait times that towns like Milton endure when purchasing an ambulance. In the meantime, Balint said she is focusing on securing federal funding for even smaller towns — Pownal and Hardwick — with tighter budgets to replace their own ambulances.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Emergency medicine responders meet with Becca Balint to talk rural health bottlenecks.

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Emergency medicine responders meet with Becca Balint to talk rural health bottlenecks

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