Firefighters to Be Trained as Paramedics in Test Plan

San Diego will use firefighters trained as paramedics to respond to emergency calls under a pilot program adopted by the City Council on Tuesday that begins next October.

The council’s decision ended a year of debate over what to do about the city’s contract with Hartson Medical Services--the primary provider of paramedic service--and the company’s pleas for additional subsidies. Hartson’s existing contract with the city expires in June, 1991.

On Tuesday, the council approved a two-year extension of the contract, with the test program beginning in October, 1991, and ending in June, 1993. The council plan calls for the city to train 35 firefighters as paramedics and establish a system that requires a firefighter-paramedic and Hartson paramedics to respond to the same emergency call.

San Diego’s firefighters are not now qualified to perform paramedic duties. All of the city’s paramedic calls are now answered by Hartson.

Under the original plan presented to the council, eight fire stations situated north of Miramar Road and three stations in San Ysidro would have firefighters trained as paramedics. On Tuesday, the council added two stations to the plan--one in East San Diego, the other in Southeast San Diego.

According to a study, fire units carrying at least one firefighter-paramedic could respond within five to six minutes to emergency calls received from within the individual station’s operational area. Studies have shown that firefighters are often the first to arrive at the scene of an emergency.

Hartson paramedics now are required to respond to emergency calls within 11 minutes. In areas where a firefighter-paramedic will respond to emergency calls, Hartson will be given an additional minute to arrive without being penalized. Once at the scene, the two paramedics that ride in every Hartson ambulance would assume responsibility for the patient and transfer him to a hospital.

Council members directed the city manager to review the new program after a year and decide if it should be implemented throughout the city. The council also asked staff to find $85,000 in next year’s budget for the pilot program in East and Southeast San Diego.

The shared program is supposed to reduce the city’s subsidy to Hartson, whose employees were unionized this year. Deputy City Manager Maureen Stapleton said the city will save $588,339 in the first year of the program and $606,284 in the second year.

The city’s subsidies to the ambulance company in each of those years will be $2.03 million and $2.23 million.