The Jacksonville City Council passed changes to the city’s ambulance ordinance last night after months of debate.
Discussions about updating the ordinance began last year, with the City of Jacksonville Ambulance Commission called to hold meetings starting in April. After months of wrangling up members for the commission, missing quorum on those meetings, and then debate about fines, fee structures, and the application of a second ambulance service by provider ECHO Ambulance; the first reading of the ordinance passed last night unanimously with little discussion or debate.
Morgan County Emergency Management Coordinator and West Central Joint Dispatch Coordinator Phil McCarty says now that the first reading has passed, a few more meetings will be held with representatives from ECHO and current provider LifeStar Ambulance to decide the rotation of calls for service: “We’re going to work with the providers to see if we can operationalize what they want for the rotation of the calls. It’s really important that we can A) make it happen and B) that it’s fair. Every call is not exactly the same. Some take more time. Some may be not available. We’re just going to try and work that out with the providers over the next 2-4 weeks so that we can make sure it’s fair. I think that’s the operational side of things, and we’ll just sit down with the two providers and try to find a solution that works best for both of them.”
McCarty says that similar to when American Ambulance Service was working in the city more than a decade ago, callers may be able to request which provider they want to respond to their particular emergency: “[The requests] certainly can happen, but that just simply slows the response down, depending upon availability. That’s really one of the things we’re going to talk about with the providers on how they really want [requests] to be handled. I think the bottom line is if I need a paramedic, I really just want the one that can get here the quickest to take care of me. They all carry the same IDPH license. The providers provide the same care. I’m sure some people will have one that they prefer, and that’s okay. We’re just going to have to work through those issues.”
McCarty says that some of it boils down to having the two companies holding each other accountable to provide emergency services to the City of Jacksonville.
McCarty says more about emergency services adequacy will be made known once the independent study commissioned by the city and county government will be completed next month. McCarty says one of the service providers has not provided the documentation to the study firm: “Everybody was sent out a survey over a month and a half ago to try and capture what’s really happening. Obviously, we hired a consultant firm from outside to take an outside view looking in. We all thought it was very important that [the firm] gets the raw data back from the providers – not through my office. Yes, certainly the dispatch center provided raw call volume data, but getting input from that. One of the providers was a little slow in getting that information back. I’m not sure yet. It my have been turned in by now. I don’t know for a fact. It’s not something that I have time to check on daily.”
McCarty hopes that the study will be released some time in September.
The final passage of the ambulance ordinance changes and the acceptance of ECHO as a second service provider is expected to occur at the scheduled September 9th Jacksonville City Council meeting.