City Ambulance Service Returned to Private Firm

Fearing the threat of lawsuits, county supervisors Tuesday returned ambulance services in the city of Ventura to a private company, despite passionate pleas from residents and city officials who said municipal firefighters were providing faster and less-expensive emergency medical care.

The board’s split decision, reached after an emotion-filled four-hour public hearing, takes effect July 31, when American Medical Response, a subsidiary of Canada-based Laidlaw Medical Transportation Inc., will again be the city’s ambulance provider.

The board’s decision follows a landmark state Supreme Court ruling handed down June 30. The state’s highest court ruled that counties--not cities--had the right to decide who will provide pre-hospital emergency services.

The court said counties must be able to control the way such services are provided in order to run an organized emergency medical response system.

Supervisors Judy Mikels, Kathy Long and Frank Schillo said they were legally bound to honor the contract that American Medical Response held when the city of Ventura took over emergency medical transportation services in July 1996. Supervisors John K. Flynn and Susan K. Lacey opposed the measure.

The majority said Ventura officials jumped the gun by creating the first city fire department in the county to operate its own paramedic unit.

Ventura was gambling that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of cities in a challenge to San Bernardino’s city-run ambulance service.

Ventura guessed wrong. But after a year of running its own service, Ventura said it successfully cut emergency response times by two minutes compared with American Medical, and cut ambulance bills by 40%.

Backed by a standing-room-only crowd, Ventura city officials asked the Board of Supervisors to open the ambulance contract to a competitive bidding process.

“We have made it better, cheaper and faster, and we have the statistics to prove it,” Ventura Mayor Jack Tingstrom said.

But three of the supervisors would not support the request, fearing that the county would be sued by Laidlaw, and that the six- to eight-month bidding process would be too costly and potentially leave the county vulnerable to even more lawsuits.

The city decided to take over ambulance service last year because it was dissatisfied with county standards that allowed private ambulance companies 10 minutes to respond to 90% of all emergencies. The regulations allow 15 acceptable reasons for an ambulance to be late.

National and state standards, city officials argued, require paramedics to reach accident scenes within eight minutes. Ventura Fire Chief Dennis J. Downs wanted the same for the city, and set out to prove that city firefighters cross-trained as paramedics could meet and beat that goal.

The board’s decision means that 12 city paramedics will lose their jobs at the end of the month and that three leased ambulances will be returned, Downs said.

“We clearly provided a better level of service and a better level of care over the last year,” Downs said after the decision. “If we were able to do that for the community over the last 365 days, then it was worth all of the heartache we just went through today.”

Several speakers said Ventura’s firefighter-paramedics saved their lives.

Adrienne and Buddy Goldbaum of Solvang had stopped at Ventura’s Hungry Hunter restaurant in March on a drive home to Santa Barbara County from Burbank. Goldbaum was in the bathroom when his heart stopped beating. Restaurant workers quickly called 911, and city paramedics were on the scene in 4 1/2 minutes. Electrical shocks got his heart beating again.

“I don’t know what happened,” the 68-year-old said. “I sat down and I slowly died. How do you thank somebody for saving your life?”

Richard Uber of Ventura was released from a hospital cardiac-care unit Monday following a heart attack July 13.

Paramedics reached his side in six minutes.

A few more minutes, Uber said, and “I would have been dead.”

But toward the end of a heated board debate, Mikels accused “everybody in this room” of theatrics and “show-boating.”

“This does not mean people are going to be dying in the streets or dying in mobile home units,” she argued.

County emergency medical efforts are divided into seven zones. Long said that when Ventura pulled out of the system a year ago, the remaining ambulance zone was fragmented between two providers. That hurt coordinated emergency response efforts and increased response times in unincorporated areas surrounding the city.

“The board has been hamstrung by the action taken by the city,” she said. “I cannot . . . fragment the system any further.”

However, the motion approved by the board included a provision that would allow the city of Ventura to continue paying paramedics to staff its firetrucks.

But following the vote, city officials said that with a $750,000 hole in Ventura’s budget, it is unlikely that the city could come up with the $350,000 to afford paramedics on firetrucks as a free service.

“No way,” Ventura City Manager Donna Landeros said.

Besides, Ventura Councilman Steve Bennett added that tapping the city’s operating budget for the money would amount to city taxpayers paying twice for ambulance service.

City Atty. Bob Boehm said Ventura has legal wiggle room to seek a preliminary injunction against the board’s decision to return the contract to American Medical. He said a legal argument can be made under state health and safety codes that Laidlaw should not automatically resume its contract.

Steve Roberts, vice president of government relations for American Medical, said he hopes that the city and company will sit down in coming days and discuss whether the city wants to enhance services by placing city paramedics on firetrucks.

He took issue with several speakers who accused private ambulance providers of putting a priority on profit instead of patients. The company is under contract to provide a standard level of care, he said, and it plans to honor it.

“Understand there are many lives that have been saved by our paramedics and the other ambulance providers [in Ventura] over the last 30 years,” he said. “Countless lives.”