The more than 200 members of the Ossining Volunteer Ambulance Corps, most of them paid professionals, serve their community every hour of every day.
Saving lives, helping people at their worst moments and providing medical aid with a caring approach is the mission, and OVAC extends that coverage by also providing EMTs to 10 other Westchester communities to supplement their local ambulance staffs.
Always in search of more ways to be of service, OVAC is also at the forefront of bringing Community Paramedicine to Westchester, one of three agencies operating demonstration programs in New York state.
“People say to me, why do you staff outside agencies,” says Nick Franzoso, OVAC’s director/chief of EMS for 10 years. “We’re here to help, whether it’s the residents of Ossining or somebody else. If another agency needs help, we’ll provide help.”
OVAC, comprised of about 40 volunteer and 170 career first responders, has provided the highest level of Basic Life Support (BLS) emergency medical care to the Ossining community since 1958 and Advance Life Support (ALS) since the 1980s. OVAC has 62 paramedics and 125 EMTs and is located in their building on Clinton Avenue.
Paramedics have more training and can perform more advanced medical procedures than EMTs including administering medications, interpreting EKGs and performing intubations. EMTs provide CPR, oxygen administration and immobilization.
Paid Ossining EMTs work shifts with ambulance corps in Briarcliff Manor, Croton-on-Hudson, Mount Kisco, Mohegan, Peekskill, Pleasantville, Sleepy Hollow and Valhalla to supplement their staff. Yorktown and Putnam Valley will join the roster in early 2025.
Franzoso says the volume of calls in the Ossining coverage area has increased 10% a year over the past several, in part because of aging populations common in Westchester. They run about 4,000 calls a year in the village and town of Ossining and the west end of New Castle up to the Taconic Parkway.
Annual revenue of nearly $7 million comes from three sources. About two-thirds comes from revenue from insurance (private, Medicaid and Medicare), with another 30% paid by tax money generated through a Mid Hudson Ambulance District. That money provides a steady income needed after OVAC faced near bankruptcy in 2008. The other four percent of revenue comes from fund drives and fundraising events. Any money above expenses is used for capital costs like cardiac monitors and new ambulance trucks which cost more than $300,000.
Providing emergency care and community medicine
OVAC staffs many of its own ambulances with paramedics making them able to provide care for any medical emergency. “We’re similar to the big cities that have advanced level service ambulances,” Franzoso says. “A lot of the smaller agencies around us are basic level services.”
Emergency calls to 911 are typically routed to local police dispatch who then forward the call to a central Westchester County dispatch system. If the first EMT responders need to escalate the call for advanced service a “flycar” SUV can be dispatched with paramedics onboard. The average response time to a call in Ossining is six minutes.
OVAC innovative Community Paramedicine program is bringing healthcare services to people in their homes. “We work with Phelps Hospital to help reduce hospital readmissions and recurring visits, helping with discharge and keeping people out of the hospital,” Franzoso says.
Impetus for creating the program came from the success OVAC had during Covid, bringing vaccines and testing out into the community and saw that this kind of treatment was the future of how EMS will fit into the healthcare setting.
“We’ll send our paramedics out to do follow-ups for people not feeling well. And we just started with a program for oncology patients, some who need fluids. Instead of going to the hospital, we can go to them.” These programs have been very successful in the western U.S. are just being introduced in New York.
A lifetime of service in Ossining
The path from Boy Scout to leading the Ossining Volunteer Ambulance Corps is a story of service and helping out whenever he sees the chance for Nick Franzoso.
He doesn’t make many runs these days as the chief administrator, but the care his people provide and the pride and professionalism they bring to OVAC is what drives him.
“The most rewarding part is the simple thank yous that we get,” Franzoso says. “They hit you in the weirdest ways, somebody who sees you a week after you do a call and they say ‘thank you, you saved my life,’ or ‘you helped me when I needed help the most.’ That little simple thank you lets me know that what we did here is great. It’s tough – sometimes you run into situations where it’s somebody’s worse day and we’re going to make this better.”
Franzoso, who became a youth member of OVAC in 1999, was elected to full membership in 2001, 2nd lieutenant in 2007, 1st lieutenant from 2008 to 2010 and volunteer captain in 2011.
He became leader of the corps by necessity in February 2014 when former Director Sam Lubin was seriously injured in a motor vehicle accident. During his years of volunteer service he also worked full-time in various management positions at Blackwalnut LLC, an Emmy-award winning fabricator of scenic environments for television, exhibits, live events and theater in Rockland County.
Trying to juggle two full-time positions, a young family, and the purchase of a new home in Ossining stretched him too thin. “I finally had to say to the ambulance board, it’s not working, please hire someone to fill this position,” Franzoso recalls. “They asked are you interested and I gladly came on board after explaining I couldn’t take a pay cut because I just bought a house.”
Ossining’s Volunteer Ambulance Corps is one of Westchester’s leading emergency health care agencies because of the people who work there.
“The success of OVAC in providing support to 10 outside agencies wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the dedication and the commitment of the staff,” Franzoso says. “I learned from Dr. Emil Nigro at Phelps years ago – it’s not what you do, it’s how you made somebody feel at the end. That’s what a patient will always remember.”
