A New Jersey ambulance and EMT service will be going out of business after 40 years.

The Monmouth Ocean Hospital Service Corporation (MONOC) services Monmouth and Ocean counties. Paramedic Zach Weiss says that he has been working for MONOC for four years. He says that he was blindsided to learn in a letter that the nonprofit organization would have to shut down on April 1 due to financial issues.

“As paramedics, it’s concerning to us,” Weiss says.

MONOC employs more than 300 people and responds to many of the advanced life support service calls in Monmouth and Ocean counties.

CEO Jeff Behm declined to be interviewed for this story. But says in a letter to employees, "MONOC has experienced a challenging financial environment while the costs of running a high quality, high-performance EMS and medical transport program, continued to rise over the last few years."

Behm says that the closure will not disturb emergency services. He says that Hackensack Meridian Health and Barnabas Health will take over and that employees will be able to transfer.

But Weiss says that without the highly-specialized structure in place under MONOC, he is concerned response times will get even longer.

“Seconds count and we are already taking minutes and I haven’t seen a plan to fix it,” he says.

The Ocean County Sheriff's Office of Emergency Management says that they have received calls from concerned residents about the situation. They said that they have scheduled meetings with the new providers to ensure there is no disruption in service.

Basic life support services, which are usually run by volunteer fire or police, will not be impacted