By Jessica A. York
Santa Cruz Sentinel, Calif.
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — For the first time in 15 years, Santa Cruz County will throw open the doors to emergency ambulance service providers to provide local service, and area fire agencies are closely tracking the process.
An existing EMS service contract with Colorado-based American Medical Response is scheduled to expire in September 2018.
For a year or more, Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency has been collaborating with emergency service stakeholders to create a request for proposals -- a contract bid -- and rethinking how services are provided locally in the process.
Santa Cruz Fire Chief Jim Frawley said leaders of the 14 fire service agencies across the county, a group known as the Santa Cruz County Fire Chiefs Association, is weighing taking a leadership role in delivering EMS services. To that end, they have jointly hired a consultant to study the financial feasibility and deployment model of such a move.
“All along, fire chiefs have been talking about, to what extent are we going to participate or how can we participate in this, because we as fire agencies on a day-to-day basis do participate in the delivery of pre-hospital emergency medical services,” Frawley said of the group’s interest in the county contract.
Frawley spoke briefly about the effort during a fire department budget presentation before the Santa Cruz City Council on Wednesday, and later to the Sentinel. He said he has taken on a leadership position among the chiefs in investigating the operational model options.
The county’s last ambulance service overhaul and bidding process was opened in 2002, coinciding with when the area’s major fire departments first began staffing highly-trained paramedic firefighters. The contract, initially stretching from 2003 to 2008, has been updated and extended several times.
American Medical Response has been contracted as the county’s sole emergency ambulance service provider since 1990, after purchasing previous long-time area ambulance provider Pac Med Paramedics, according to the county. American Medical Response Regional Director Doug Petrick said his company is “certainly considering” putting in a bid for the next contract.
“The RFP should be out later this year,” Petrick said of the contract bid. “We’ll review it and determine it at that time whether we’ll bid. We’ve been here for well over 40 years.”
Qualifications
Today, firefighters for the county’s numerous paid and volunteer agencies nearly are all certified as EMT-level or higher, according to the county Emergency Medical Services Agency. Santa Cruz city, Central Fire District, Aptos/La Selva Fire District, Scotts Valley and Watsonville fire departments also employ firefighter/paramedics.
A contract provision sets the amount of time -- from 8 to 20 minutes -- that patients, depending on where they live in the county, will have to wait for emergency first response. Ambulance service is given a response buffer when firefighter paramedics are first on the scene.
“As fire chiefs, we’ve talked about, where do we fit, how do we fit -- what is the value of the service that we provide,” Frawley said.
Frawley said the consultant has been studying medical services, type of calls, medical billing revenue and options to provide service to the community for the past month. He said he expects results of the study soon. From there, however, the fire agency’s level of involvement will require"an enormous amount of work” to decipher, to the point where Frawley said it was premature to ask Santa Cruz City Council to consider setting aside funding in its 2017-2018 budget.
Petrick said Santa Cruz County offers some financial challenges, due to its significant number of Medicaid patients whose insurance offers the lowest reimbursement rates.
Copyright 2017 Santa Cruz Sentinel