By Lisa Walton
The Gazette
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. — After months of negotiations, the El Paso County Emergency Services Authority on Wednesday approved an ambulance service contract draft that has been in the works since June of last year.
Board members unanimously voted to approve the draft, following an executive session at the monthly ESA board meeting.
“It’s was unfortunate that it took so much work,” said Peggy Littleton, an alternate for board chair Sallie Clark.
“We’re moving forward in a positive new direction.” The draft of the 5-year contract with American Medical Response will go to both the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners and the City of Fountain for final approval on June 24.
It will go into effect on July 1, said ESA board vice-president Carl Tatum.
County officials had worked for months to negotiate a new contract with AMR after The City of Colorado Springs, which had previously been involved in the contract for two decades, announced its plans to pull out last June. The city finalized the new contract with AMR in December and the contract went into effect on April 1.
Meanwhile, the county worked on reconstituting the ESA board without the City of Colorado Springs, forming a new intergovernmental agreement with the City of Fountain. The agreement, signed in March created a new “authority” that would put together a new contract and oversee ambulance services.
The board negotiated terms for breaking the contract, the amount of available ambulances. They also worked to negotiate a system that would allow some overlap of ambulance services between Colorado Springs and the county, said Tatum.
“The draft was kicked back about a half dozen times (during negotiations),” said Tatum.
The new contract will give AMR the option of receiving help from Basic Life Support rigs at local fire stations to help out with patient transport,
Going forward, Tatum said the board will be looking at ways to bring new systems into the county while working on ways to improve partnerships between local fire stations and AMR.
The board will also look into how community paramedic programs, which allow patients to be treated in their homes, will impact emergency medical response in the future.
The contract should be available publicly after July 1.