Maryland EMS agency budget rises as lawmakers press for details on stalled Critical Care Coordination Center

The Health and Social Services Subcommittee heard Jan. 29 that the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MEMS) has a fiscal 2026 allowance of $25,800,000, $3,000,000 more than fiscal 2025, as lawmakers pressed the agency on emergency department strain and the status of a suspended statewide coordination center.

The Department of Legislative Services analyst Naomi Kimura told the subcommittee the increase “is really driven by an increase in cost related to personnel for salary increases and fringe benefits,” and noted the budget includes a $390,000 federally funded pilot from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to map hospital bed capacity nationwide.

The DLS presentation flagged emergency-department transfer times as a core problem. “The average of all states in the U.S. is 163 minutes and Maryland's average is above that at 250 minutes,” Kimura said, citing calendar-year 2023 median wait-time data. DLS asked MEMS to specify a cancelled fiscal 2024 appropriation for the Critical Care Coordination Center (C4) and to explain plans to identify funding sources to resume operations in fiscal 2026.

Dr. Delbridge, MEMS’s executive director, told the committee MEMS licenses and certifies nearly 20,000 EMS clinicians and oversees about 496 ambulances that last year completed more than 240,000 patient transports. He described the C4, created in December 2020 to relieve pandemic-driven hospital strain, as a service that “fielded 7,000 calls from hospital clinicians to locate critical care resources,” and said it helped avoid transfers in about 30% of cases.

Delbridge said grant funding that supported the C4 expired in June 2024 and the center was placed in hibernation. He said MEMS hopes to restart C4 operations in fiscal 2026 but has not secured new grant funding. DLS recommended the subcommittee ask MEMS for the exact amount of the fiscal 2024 appropriation that was cancelled for the C4 and the agency’s plan for sourcing fiscal 2026 funding.

Committee members also questioned budget line items: Kimura noted a proposed fiscal 2025 deficiency of $280,000 for renovation of the Parole Tower and that about $1,000,000 was placed in the Board of Public Works for the project. MEMS’s budget breakout shows most funding inside personnel costs, about $3,000,000 for telecommunications and roughly $2,300,000 for building and equipment maintenance, including statewide communications tower upkeep. The fiscal 2026 allowance adds two positions: a contractual ambulance inspector (already filled) and a program manager to oversee the statutory AED–naloxone co‑location requirement.

Lawmakers asked whether other grant avenues had been pursued for the C4; Delbridge said MEMS has looked to the CDC (the original funder) and to homeland-security grants but has not yet secured replacement funding. The subcommittee did not take formal action; DLS recommended concurring with the governor’s allowance for MEMS but requested follow-up on the cancelled appropriation and C4 funding plan.

Members of the subcommittee signaled interest in the agency’s work to track transfer times and in the pilot to measure hospital bed capacity, and requested more detail on contractual and telecom spending. MEMS agreed to provide the requested follow-up information to the subcommittee.