By Anthony Spangler
Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas)
FORT WORTH, Texas — The city plans to spend $10,000 a day for off-duty firefighters to answer the most serious emergency calls because ambulance provider MedStar is failing to respond to calls in time, officials said Monday.
Temporary crews are necessary, according to city documents, because of MedStar staffing shortages and increased calls for service that have led to extended response times citywide.
“We’re going to do it for at least 10 days or as many as 30 days,” Assistant City Manager Joe Paniagua said Monday. “There’s no doubt that the tremendous growth of the city has had an impact on this.”
MedStar’s contract requires its crews to respond to 90 percent of Priority 1 calls, emergencies with the most serious injuries, within nine minutes.
MedStar has not met that goal in more than a year. Last month, ambulances reached 79.3 percent of Priority 1 calls within nine minutes.
“For the first time in a long time, [MedStar] showed several calls that exceeded the nine-minute goal, with about nine calls that were in excess of 20 minutes,” Paniagua said. “That’s what precipitated us getting involved.”
The City Council has called an emergency meeting for today to discuss the ambulance service and long response times.
An old problem
MedStar ambulance crews have had problems meeting response-time goals for years. Last year, the Area Metropolitan Ambulance Authority, which operates MedStar, ended its third-party contract with Rural-Metro and took over the service.
Under the former system, MedStar could levy fines when goals were not met.
“Since MedStar has taken over the service, it is up in the air whether MedStar can impose fines against itself,” Paniagua said. “Short of terminating the contract, there isn’t much we can do.”
The city, which pays MedStar about $1.3 million annually, can terminate the contract at any time. But Paniagua stressed that Fort Worth has no intention of pulling out.
Instead, the city plans to pay firefighters who are trained as paramedics or emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, to work overtime until MedStar can staff its ambulances properly.
Firefighters — one paramedic and one EMT — will staff six brush trucks from stations 12, 17, 23, 24, 36 and 37. The crews will work during their 48 hours of downtime between regular shifts, said Fire Chief Rudy Jackson.
“These firefighters are working on their off time,” he said.
Firefighters have already been affected by MedStar staffing shortages because they are often the first responders to emergencies.
“We’re not going to drive away and leave a patient,” said Lt. Kent Worley, a Fort Worth Fire Department spokesman. “We won’t clear a scene until the medical portion of the call is cleared. So if an ambulance hasn’t arrived, our fire crew is stuck on that call.”
MedStar shortages
MedStar needs 77 paramedics and 77 EMTs to staff ambulances that serve 15 cities in the Metroplex, including Fort Worth, said MedStar Executive Director Jack Eades. It is short 16 paramedics and 22 EMTs, he said.
Two training classes will bring MedStar to full strength for EMTs by late October, but it will still be short three paramedics, Eades said.
“A shortage of paramedics and EMTs is a national problem,” he said.
Starting pay is $25,618 for EMTs with no experience and $37,357 for paramedics with no experience.
During recent budget discussions, council members acknowledged that building infrastructure and providing emergency service is lagging behind the city’s growth.
Councilman Danny Scarth, the city representative to the ambulance authority, said MedStar is meeting goals in most cases.
“There is no doubt they are understaffed,” he said. “It is certainly better than it was a few years ago when they had a private contractor that was handling everything.
“But there have been some isolated incidents where the calls have been longer than the goal of nine minutes.”
Copyright 2007 Fort Worth Star-Telegram