Three weeks into working with American Medical Response instead of Medic One, Lewis County Fire District 5 Chief Gregg Peterson said the transition has gone smoother than expected.
Peterson thought there would be “glitches” with the change, and while he noted there are differences in paperwork, he hasn’t seen any negative consequences with personnel.
Now that the district that serving Napavine and the Newaukum Valley is contracted with AMR, it has one in-house paramedic, which Peterson said has increased response time for advanced life support calls.
“And that would translate into faster times for patients to get to the hospital,” Peterson said.
Having a medic in the fire station provides a better service for taxpayers, Kevin Van Egdom, district 5 commissioner, said. Concern for public dollars was Van Egdom’s main focus in the consideration to switch providers.
However, it’s not known at this point if the district is saving money. Still, being contracted with AMR has put Van Egdom more at ease. The reason for that peace of mind, he said, is because AMR, a for-profit company, is not operating at a loss and Medic One has an estimated budget shortfall of $294,000 without District 5.
The decision to change came at the end of the district’s contract as a member of the Lewis County Medic One Interlocal Board. Medic One is owned by three south county fire districts and now provides contracted services to three fire districts. District 5’s commission decided to contract with AMR near the end of last year. The five-year contract with an annual cost of $283,500 went into effect on Jan. 1.
With Medic One, District 5 paid a per-call fee.
Based on how many calls the district ran on last year, the cost with AMR is about $910 per call. The district does collect revenue from patient billing, but it is too early under the AMR contract to have any figures for bill collection, Van Egdom said.
Under the contract with District 5, Medic One did patient billing and collection and reimbursed the district for ambulance use. Van Egdom said Medic One withdrew from that contract and wanted to have District 5 do its own billing and pay a per-call cost under a new contract.
However, the contract Medic One sent to District 5 did not include a cost per call. That uncertainty, along with Medic One’s financial deficit, accounted for Van Egdom’s desire to switch providers.
“I asked south county for a balanced budget, and they were unable to do that,” Van Egdom said. “So I was concerned the rates would have gone up with south county because they couldn’t provide a balanced budget.”
Because Medic One was previously handling the billing process and did not provide the commissioners with a per-call price in the proposed new contract, Van Egdom said, he doesn’t know how costs compare between AMR and Medic One.
“It’s hard to figure out, well, are we paying more for AMR at this time versus south county? Well, we don’t know because we don’t have, we never were provided with any numbers from south county,” Van Egdom said.
Van Egdom said the performance of Medic One paramedics was not a factor in the decision. While the choice could affect other fire districts because Medic One is funded by a collective, he said District 5 had to consider financial and service-level responsibilities.
“I think the biggest thing is that we increase the service to our taxpayers by having a medic in our station with us,” Van Egdom said.
But sometimes one medic is not enough. If the station receives two ALS calls, AMR assistance comes from Chehalis.
Peterson said District 5 has already utilized the AMR ambulance from Chehalis because the district’s medic unit was transporting a patient from Winlock.
Before switching to AMR, non-transport sprint vehicles responded first for medic support, so, if needed, crews would have to wait for an aid car.
Peterson said the district hasn’t seen a significant difference in response time when working two ALS calls.
Another perk to the new agreement is the AMR medic is in the same vehicle every day, so they are used to the setup and are able to work more efficiently. Previously they didn’t know what sort of aid car would be arriving and what the setup would be.
District 5 has also benefited from having another person at the station to help complete tasks and participate in training as the AMR paramedic on duty is a part of the crew, Peterson said.
“It gives us a much better working relationships with people that we’re totally familiar with, and basically the duty crew lives with for 24 hours a day,” Peterson said.
