The Naperville Fire Department plans to hire six new employees to build out a program that allows emergency responders to help people with mental health, addiction or other issues that don’t require hospitalization.
Naperville City Council members unanimously authorized the new full-time positions at a meeting Tuesday night. The increased staffing will cost about $175,000 in 2023 and about $750,000 to theBut ultimately the new program won’t add to property owners’ tax bills because the cost will be covered by insurance billing.
“The difference is might be a nonemergent type of thing, where we’re thinking, gosh, you don’t really need to go to the hospital but you do need certain types of therapy,” Puknaitis said. The fire department started piloting the program in January 2022 but on a limited, 40 hours a week basis. Action taken by the council Tuesday gives the program the staffing it needs to be a 24/7 operation.Naperville seeing success in new approach to 911 calls stemming from mental health or other issues“These calls don’t stop at 5 p.m. in the evening, they go on the weekend, on holidays,” Puknaitis said.
As an added resource, the chief said he plans to enlist graduate students working on master’s degrees in nursing at Naperville’s North Central College to ride along on the CART ambulance and help respond to calls. “For 2023, for example, we estimate collecting $9.3 million in ambulance fees. This will be a component of that,” she said.Ambulance fees incurred by residents, Mayer said, will be covered either through individual insurance carriers or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid , the latter made possible by a recently developed federal program.