Termination of Ambulance Firm Raises Worries : Santa Clarita Valley: The company says it was fired after pointing out dispatch mistakes. Some fear service will suffer.

A long-running dispute over alleged mistakes in relaying emergency calls has ended with the firing of an ambulance company serving the Santa Clarita Valley, igniting fears that the smaller number of replacement ambulances now on the streets won’t be able to meet demands for service.

“We’re profoundly disappointed and concerned about what kind of service we can now expect in this valley,” said Tim Jorgensen, contracts administrator for Santa Clarita Ambulance, the company that was fired Sunday after speaking out about delays in emergency response times.

Santa Clarita had five ambulances and three backup vehicles answering calls to 911 for emergency service. They have been replaced by three emergency vehicles operated by Wilson Ambulance, headquartered in Palmdale. Effective Sunday morning, Wilson fired Santa Clarita Ambulance as its 911 subcontractor.

“It’s a real mess,” said Bruce Fortine, a community leader from Castaic who worries that his outlying community may be among the first to suffer.

The dispute over ambulance service has special importance in an area that is a crossroads of fast-track growth with a potential for serious emergencies--a region visited by thousands each day at Magic Mountain, strangled by rush-hour traffic, and nagged by fear of brush fires and--more recently--riots at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic.

The dispute is between two family-owned ambulance companies whose heritage has spanned the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys’ transition from rural outpost to suburban sprawl. Wilson Ambulance won the contract in April, 1990, to provide 911 service in both valleys, covering 2,400 square miles.

Santa Clarita Ambulance, formerly Newhall Ambulance, bid unsuccessfully for the county’s contract, but was hired as Wilson’s subcontractor to provide ambulance service in the Santa Clarita Valley.

The conflict between the two companies began two years ago and initially packed more whimper than bang. But over time, Jorgensen said, his company had complained to Wilson and county officials of 475 incidents of “dispatch procedure flaws” that he says have crippled responses to medical emergencies and caused delays ranging from one to 31 minutes.

Jorgensen charged that the county’s procedure for routing Santa Clarita Valley’s 911 calls caused too many delays. Emergency calls to 911 from the Santa Clarita Valley go to the Sheriff’s Department, then to the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s downtown Los Angeles dispatch center, then to Wilson’s dispatchers in Palmdale and finally to Santa Clarita Ambulance.

Jorgensen complained that Wilson’s dispatchers too often mistakenly sent drivers to wrong addresses and neglected to give them nearest cross streets. Moreover, he said, “no individual from Wilson Ambulance or the county Department of Health Services has ever visited our office to review our records or listen to our taped recordings.”

As time went on, the complaints grew more public, until the issue came to a head last month when a company official appeared at a Santa Clarita City Council meeting to complain about the alleged dispatch problems. The notice of termination that took effect Sunday was sent in early September.

Jorgensen said he believed the firing came as a result of the complaints. “Our initial reaction is that it was retaliatory, because there was never any question about our performance,” Jorgensen said. “We passed a county audit that said we were performing satisfactorily.”

Jorgensen said the firing will mean layoffs of at least 17 employees and revenue losses of between 40% and 45%.

For their part, Wilson and county officials say no serious problems exist in the county’s relay system.

“The only guy who’s complaining is Tim Jorgensen,” said Thomas Anton, Wilson’s attorney. “If our problems were as serious as Mr. Jorgensen has alleged, I guarantee you that the county’s fire captain would have driven his truck right into the Board of Supervisors meetings and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got a problem.’ Well, it hasn’t happened.”

Anton also denied that the firing was in retaliation for the complaints lodged by Jorgensen. He said Wilson chose to terminate Santa Clarita Ambulance because Jorgensen had been asking to bypass Wilson’s dispatchers in Palmdale and receive emergency 911 calls directly from the county.

“If we gave Santa Clarita Ambulance direct dispatch, any liability would still be on our backs,” Anton said. “We didn’t want to take those kinds of risks. We’re the primary provider of service, so we’d rather deal with any problems ourselves.”

Anton maintained that the problem isn’t Wilson’s but the county’s. “We don’t have any control over how the county relays those calls,” he said. “Even if we wanted to change that procedure, we couldn’t do it.”

As a result of the firing, Wilson has moved three vehicles into its own Santa Clarita station on busy Soledad Canyon Road. The company plans to put a second station, equipped with one vehicle, in Castaic by early November.

The firing has ignited worries that the valley’s ambulance service will slacken.

“It stands to reason that if you have fewer vehicles covering the same area, response time may suffer,” said Assistant Chief Gary Nelson of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s Santa Clarita station.

“We’re optimistic, however, that this area will receive quality service because Wilson does an excellent job up in Antelope Valley. We’ll be watching response times very closely. If they’re not what they should be, we’ll complain and make sure they address the problem.”

Some observers contend that the county should have intervened more quickly. “There’s no reason why both sides couldn’t have worked things out,” said Fortine, the Castaic community leader.

“That would have happened if our county supervisor, Mike Antonovich, had investigated it early, brought both sides together and said, ‘Look, this is for the safety of the whole Santa Clarita Valley.’ ”

Antonovich--whose 5th District encompasses the Santa Clarita Valley--and other county officials have expressed confidence in Wilson. He said that the county’s Department of Health Services will carefully monitor the company’s performance.

Antonovich assured members of the Castaic Area Town Council in a letter that Wilson will position, or “stage,” its vehicles in strategic areas during peak traffic hours to ensure “expedient service.” He added that when Wilson ambulances respond to calls in the Santa Clarita Valley, the company will send backup vehicles from Palmdale and, if necessary, summon reinforcements from other companies that serve outlying areas.

County officials also stress that Wilson’s presence in the Santa Clarita Valley is dedicated exclusively to 911 service. Santa Clarita Ambulance had responded both to 911 calls and to requests for transporting patients. The firm also served clients such as Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, Magic Mountain and the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho.

“Wilson’s operation has convinced us that they’re more than adequately prepared,” said Toni Yaffe, director of ambulance contracting for the Department of Health Services.

Wilson’s contract with the county expires Dec. 31, Yaffe said, adding that the company--with the county’s approval--may exercise an option to extend the agreement for two one-year periods through 1994. She said Wilson’s performance in the meantime will help the county determine whether it would accept bids for a new contract sooner.

Meanwhile, Jorgensen clings to hope that his company will not be shut out of 911 service forever. “We think this is only temporary,” he said. “We’ve never had to scale back in our 28 years in business. We feel we’re still the choice of the community.”