By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
For the first time in at least two decades, there is competition to provide ambulance service for most of Lincoln County.
American Medical Response/Northwest, an arm of a $4.3 billion nationwide medical transportation company, is challenging longtime provider Pacific West Ambulance for a five-year contract to serve four areas of the county.
The county is divided into five ambulance service districts – north Lincoln County, including Lincoln City and Otis; Depoe Bay; central Lincoln County including Newport, Siletz and Toledo; Waldport including Seal Rock and Tidewater, and the Yachats area.
PacWest has held the contracts for most of the areas for 35 years as fire departments found ambulances costly to operate and got out of the business, including Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue in Waldport which transferred its contract to PacWest in 2016.
North Lincoln Fire and Rescue based in Lincoln City operates a back-up ambulance under a mutual aide agreement with PacWest to supplement operations there. South Lincoln Ambulance, a private, nonprofit staffed by Yachats Fire District personnel and controlled by Yachats chief Frankie Petrick, provides ambulance service in the Yachats area and is not affected by either company’s bid.
Executives of both companies made presentations Wednesday to county commissioners, who plan to discuss the two bids May 18 and make a decision in June. The current contracts end July 1; the new contract would be for five years.
The commissioners also have the ability — but have not yet done so — to ask a subcommittee of the county’s ambulance service review committee to use their expertise to go over the bids and make a recommendation. The committee is made up of some fire chiefs, medical providers, hospital executives and two public members and meets quarterly to review ambulance service and response times in the county.
In their bid documents, both companies said they would charge $1,500 and $21 per mile for ambulance calls, which is PacWest’s current rate for services.
AMR stresses national resources
On Wednesday, executives of both companies either stressed their local employees and community connections or touted their ability to draw on resources nationally.
“We want to bring Lincoln County a customized plan,” said Randy Lauer, AMR/Northwest’s vice president of operations, but adding “Admittedly, we’re still learning about Lincoln County emergency medical services.”
But in its formal bid packet, AMR said PacWest’s four advanced life support ambulances and one basic life support ambulance currently on duty “seems light for the service area …”
In addition to providing regular ambulance service, Lauer said the company’s “bench strength” was a big asset – being able to hire, recruit or transfer paramedics to under-staffed areas during the Covid pandemic, for example, or responding to major emergencies.
“We can bring a national response to local disasters,” he said. “When bad things happen, you can come to us.”
If AMR wins the county’s bid, Lauer said it would offer all PacWest employees jobs with AMR with no change in seniority and with increased benefits. It would look to find commercial buildings for its offices and staff, Lauer said, and ask to continue renting or using fire department space in Waldport and Toledo. Its bid packet estimated first-year costs would be $4.58 million.
AMR/Northwest is a subsidiary of Colorado-based Global Medical Response, which has more than 35,000 employees across the United States. It has ambulance service contracts in Multnomah, Clackamas and Josephine counties in Oregon and Clark and Cowlitz counties in Washington.
AMR executives touted their response to Labor Day 2020 fires in Clackamas County, where it has an ambulance contract, and access to resources – staff and equipment from across the country – in case of a major catastrophe.
“We’re locally led, regionally supported,” said Marc Kilman-Burnham, AMR’s director of government affairs. “We don’t bid on contracts unless we can be a long term solution.”
In answer to a “why now” question from commission chair Claire Hall, Lauer said AMR decided to bid on the contracts after being contacted “by fire leaders” in the county. “We had some conversations … and there were some opportunities,” he said.
AMR did not seek the Yachats-area ambulance contract, Lauer said, because they heard “people are fairly happy with the service there.”
PacWest stresses local ties
PacWest general manager Jeff Mathia took a different approach to commissioners, saying its parent company, Hillsboro-based Metro West Ambulance, has experience serving rural areas of Oregon and that PacWest has been in Lincoln County for 35 years.
“We don’t have a large corporate structure. We’re a family company,” Mathia said. Company owner JD Fuiten “has entrusted me to make decisions as though it’s my personal business. I don’t have to run it through a committee or up a corporate ladder.”
He told the commissioners PacWest owns offices in Newport and Lincoln City to house ambulances, paramedics and business staff and rents space at the Toledo and Central Coast fire departments. It has 74 employees including 40 paramedics/EMTs and 22 office staff, the majority of which live in the county, and a yearly budget of $4.5 million.
PacWest tries to hire and train locally, Mathia said, buys equipment, supplies and gets repairs done locally, partners with fire departments for group purchases, and works with Samaritan Health Services on emergency protocols.
“For 35 years we’ve been in Lincoln County,” he said. “We’ve been through the highs and lows.”
Like all medical providers, he said, the pandemic created both a big demand for and a shortage of paramedics and EMTs. Mathia said PacWest has two EMTs in training at Oregon Coast Community College, four paramedics ready to graduate from community college programs, and 90 percent of its medical staff have signed up for incentives in return for two-year employment commitments.
Mathia said those six new paramedics/EMTs arriving by July 1 will allow PacWest to run 5-6 ambulances during the day and 4-5 at night.
“Even when times are good, we are always recruiting,” he said.
Last year, during the height of the pandemic and staffing shortages, the ambulance review committee and commissioners allowed PacWest to run one ambulance with just EMTs (called basic life support) and to ease response time parameters until this spring.
Mathia said Wednesday that PacWest is “improving staffing and getting our response times down to where they need to be.”
In its bid packet, PacWest said in Lincoln County the “real challenge is providing care for a smaller population of residents nine months a year and being staffed, equipped and prepared to provide additional resources to care for a drastically increased population during the peak tourist season.”
PacWest offered letters of support from the board of North Lincoln Fire and Rescue, chiefs from Central Oregon Coast, Siletz and Toledo, and the head of Oregon Coast Community College’s nursing program. Newport did not offer a letter. Also absent was support from the Depoe Bay Fire Department, whose chief has clashed with PacWest over a failed proposal to put an ambulance it wanted to buy into service when calls are heavy and to do transports locally or into the Willamette Valley.
In response to a question from Hall, Mathia acknowledged issues with one department — without naming Depoe Bay.
“We have one agency that we’re estranged with,” he said. “But I’m willing to work with them.”
- Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
I would choose to work with our local resource people with PacWest, as they know the county, and employ local people who in my experiences as a community health nurse caring for people in their homes and as a nurse in assisted living, they have done well for our clients and have relationships with the hospitals locally and in the valley. Another benefit is their invitation to become a member of “Lifeguard” group for a small amount annually to have “no deductibles, no co-pays, and no surprises.” My family has been well served on a few occasions when ambulance transfer was needed and I would much rather support this local company who has proven their commitment to public service than sell out to a large national corporation that is profit driven.
Competition is good.