County Firefighters Lose Paramedics Battle : Emergency: They wanted their own program. But supervisors stick with private ambulance firms.

Ventura County firefighters lost a long-running battle Tuesday to establish their own paramedic program, as the Board of Supervisors agreed to maintain exclusive contracts with three private ambulance companies.

The board voted 4 to 1 to keep the county’s bidding process closed and instead negotiate new contracts with Ojai Ambulance in Ojai, Gulf Coast Ambulance in Oxnard and CareLine California in Thousand Oaks. Supervisor Susan Lacey cast the dissenting vote, saying she favored more of a partnership between firefighters and the ambulance companies.

“We’re disappointed,” Deputy Fire Chief Robert Roper said after the board’s vote. “But I can’t have sour grapes. The best thing about today was that the board has finally made a decision and now we can get on with working with the private ambulance companies to improve service.”

Firefighters had argued that they typically arrive at accidents before private ambulances and therefore could provide medical attention to victims more quickly. They also said a public system would give the board more control over paramedic and ambulance services.

But Supervisors Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels said the county could correct any existing problems by imposing new regulations on the ambulance companies. They also said they are philosophically opposed to the government taking over what is now a privately run business.

“I believe government should regulate and private industry should operate,” Mikels said.

The supervisors’ main concern, however, centered around the potential start-up costs of a firefighter paramedic program and of providing extra pay for those trained and certified in advanced medical care.

Schillo said he had asked fire officials twice for initial cost estimates, but never received the information. “I don’t have any idea what this is going to cost taxpayers,” he said.

Roper said the information was not immediately turned over to officials because it would have automatically become public record. He said this would have given an unfair advantage to the competing ambulance companies, which would have been able to review the information before making their own bids.

Still, Roper said later that “our position was that this was not going to be a revenue producer. Our position was that we wanted to enhance the level of patient care.”

Representatives of the three ambulance companies said that with the board’s action Tuesday they are now planning to move forward with development of a centralized dispatch system, which could help improve response times in some areas of the county.

Currently, emergency calls are first received either by the sheriff or a local police department, then relayed to an ambulance provider. Under the proposed system, ambulance dispatchers would work alongside sheriff’s dispatchers, who are situated at a single site in Ventura. This would enable them to receive emergency calls at the same time.

“If we can reduce the time it takes to process calls to the appropriate agency, we think we can cut down at least a minute and a half” off the response time, said Stephen Frank, president and owner of Ojai Ambulance.

Meanwhile, the city of Ventura has informed the county that it plans to withdraw from its agreement with the three ambulance companies and develop its own paramedic program. The city is considering establishing a partnership with CareLine California to provide hospital transportation only, while Ventura firefighters would be trained to provide paramedic services.

Ventura Fire Chief Dennis Downs told supervisors Tuesday that he believes such a system would allow his city to reduce its paramedic response time from and average of 10 minutes to six minutes 90% of the time.