Below is the full text of a statement from Allen County Commissioners about their intention to seek options for EMS providers.
Feb. 7, 2023
From the Allen County Commission to residents of Allen County:
Allen County WILL have ambulance service come Aug. 1, 2023.
This assurance to our county’s residents may seem unnecessary and somewhat odd, but the Allen County Commission takes its statutory requirement to provide for the health and safety of its residents most seriously. And as the City of Iola, with whom Allen County now contracts to provide personnel and administration of our countywide ambulance service, has notified the County that it will terminate that contract in six months, we commissioners feel it necessary to give this assurance and let residents know we are actively pursuing seamless provision of top-notch ambulance service for their future.
A bit of history might be helpful to put the ambulance situation in perspective.
The county-city ambulance agreement was due for renegotiation in 2020, but since the nation was in the midst of the pandemic, both entities agreed to extend the contract by a year since we had plenty of other things on our agendas. Cost to the county, which has bought the ambulances and much of the equipment in them, per the contract, as well as recently invested in ambulance stations at Humboldt and Moran, was about $1.1 million at the time for the City of Iola to pay personnel to staff the ambulances and administer the service. The first renewal offer from Iola was $1.4 million for the ensuing five years.
Allen County, having some concerns with the service as it had been administered, specifically availability of ambulances when needed and the necessity of ambulances to provide transfers of patients from Allen County Regional Hospital when medical professionals deemed them necessary, prompted commissioners to consider alternative providers. American Medical Response (AMR) gave the county a proposal and a majority of the County Commission voted to contract with AMR.
A stipulation of its service provision model for Allen County was for AMR to be able to recruit emergency medical service personnel from the Iola Fire Department/EMS for staffing AMR’s service in Allen County, and, at that time in 2021, the company was not confident that it could do so. As a result, it removed itself from consideration for an agreement with the county.
Allen County returned to negotiations with the City of Iola, which had proposed a new agreement at a cost of about $1.65 million. The county received assurance from the city regarding transfers and other concerns it had, and a majority of the County Commission voted in January 2022 to start a new five-year agreement with the City of Iola. The new contract, approved in good faith by theCounty Commission, provided for an inflation allowance (Consumer Price Index) increase for each of the five years of the agreement, and this year Allen County began paying the city about $1.69 million with the inflation increase.
The City of Iola notified Allen County Jan. 23 of this year, just a little more than a year after the contract was approved, that it was pulling out of the agreement, effective Aug. 1. Administrators have said publicly at City Commission meetings that costs of operating the ambulance service make it impossible to continue in the agreement and have indicated that a new agreement with Allen County, at an increased cost of $250,000 and decreased service requirements — for instance, Basic Life Support personnel on board ambulances rather than Advanced Life Support certified EMS providers — would be entertained for continuing the arrangement Aug. 1 and thereafter. Therefore, the city of Iola’s new proposal is for a total of $1.94 million dollars with a decrease in the level of patient care service from the existing Advanced Life Support (ALS) to Basic Life Support (BLS) level.
