By Emily Fitzgerald
The Chronicle
LEWIS COUNTY, Wash. — After 45 years as an ambulance provider for Lewis County, American Medical Response (AMR) will close its Lewis County office at the end of May.
The closure comes as the Lewis County Ambulance Service Consortium officially enters a three-year contract June 1 with Medix Ambulance for services in the consortium’s coverage area, which includes the Riverside Fire Authority, the Chehalis Fire Department, Lewis County Fire District 6- Adna / Chehalis, Lewis County Fire District 11- Pe Ell, Lewis County Fire District 13-Boistfort and Lewis County Fire District 16- Doty /Dryad.
“Rates were a big proponent,” Riverside Fire Authority Chief Kevin Anderson said of the Lewis County Ambulance Service Consortium’s decision to switch to Medix Ambulance.
“This has not been an easy decision,” AMR Western Washington Regional Director Hillarie Grenier said of closing Lewis County AMR. “This has been really difficult for us, and Lewis County is where I got my start. So, to me, it’s really emotional.”
The operation, located in Centralia, officially opened on May 1, 1982, as a hospital-based program run in partnership with St. Helen Hospital and City Ambulance. In 1989, the program was purchased by Care Ambulance, which ultimately became Lewis County AMR.
“The AMR name has been here since ’97, but we purchased the company that had been here before that,” Lewis County AMR Operations Manager Tony Kuzma said.
AMR’s current contract in Lewis County is with the Lewis Grays Harbor County Ambulance Consortium, which was recently renamed the Lewis County Ambulance Service Consortium after Grays Harbor Fire District 1- Oakville notified the consortium that it was able to provide its own ambulance services going forward.
That existing contract expires May 31.
The Lewis County Ambulance Consortium issued a request for proposals on Dec. 6, 2024, for ambulance service providers interested in contracting with the consortium for the next three years.
AMR, Medix Ambulance and Northwest Ambulance each submitted proposals by the Jan. 22 deadline, which were reviewed by the fire chiefs for each agency within the consortium.
Northwest Ambulance’s proposal was quickly taken out of consideration for not being able to provide ALS service, according to Anderson.
AMR’s proposal was for three full-time ambulances, five peak time ambulance units and five 911 units for interfacility work, which the consortium noted in a consensus scoring form was sufficient to “to maintain the status quo.”
However, AMR’s proposed ALS rates — $3,672 for 2025, $4,222.80 for 2026 and $4,856.22 for 2027, with mileage fees ranging from $50 to $66.12 per mile — were more than double AMR’s current rates.
“We gave them our rates, and then our finance team came back and said, ‘actually, we need to go higher than that.’ And then they came back again and said, ‘We actually need to go higher,’ Kuzma said.
The high rates included in the final proposal were the result of increased employee wages and health care costs, Kuzma said.
“The ambulance transport rates had not kept up with some of those cost increases, so it was a bit of a lag. We were a little bit behind,” Kuzma said.
While AMR proposed significantly higher rates to the consortium for the next three years, Medix Ambulance’s proposed ALS rates — $1,964.37 for 2025, $1,736.91 for 2026 and $1,823.76 for 2027 — were more consistent with the consortium’s current rates.
“This rate is much more in line with the rest of the state, and with what we were being charged,” the consortium stated in a consensus scoring form.
Medix Ambulance’s proposal also includes six peak-time units, with access to up to four more from a sister company, Olympic Ambulance, which serves Thurston County, for interfacility work as needed.
Medix Ambulance, a subsidiary of Metro Northwest based out of Hillsboro, Oregon, took over from AMR as the ambulance provider for the City of Longview last year. The company also serves the Long Beach, Ilwaco and Chinook communities in South Pacific County and provides intercept services for Wahkiakum County.
“As one of your neighbors to the south and with another of our sister companies, Olympic Ambulance, to your north, we are familiar with this region and what it takes to partner and provide the care you want the citizens you serve to have,” Medix Ambulance stated in its proposal.
The Lewis County Ambulance Consortium officially awarded the upcoming contract to Medix Ambulance in February, with the contract to go into effect June 1.
“We think it’s going to be a better level of service provided to all of our collective areas for a lesser charge than what was being proposed by the previous company,” Anderson said.
Lewis County AMR has a separate agreement with Providence Centralia Hospital for interfacility transports, “and so we’re meeting with them soon to see if they want us to continue doing any portion of that business, or if they want to keep it all with one ambulance company,” Kuzma said.
AMR does have another business unit in Olympia, Kuzma said, “and we may continue to do some Lewis County transports ... so we’re not necessarily giving up our ambulance license in the county, and the fire departments all know that if the new ambulance company for the area doesn’t work out, that they could always contact us and we would be willing to continue working with them and help the community in any way that we can.”
Lewis County AMR sent all of its employees a 60-day notice in preparation for the May 31 office closure and is currently working with employees to help them move into new jobs.
“We’re making sure the best we can that all the employees are taken care of. That’s our biggest focus right now, is making sure they have someplace to go,” Grenier said.
AMR does have positions within its organization that Lewis County employees can move into, “or they can choose to stay local and work with the other ambulance company,” Kuzma said. “We certainly have no hard feelings for them doing that.”
As Lewis County AMR prepares to close, Kuzma and Grenier said they want to thank their employees for their service and the Lewis County community for allowing AMR to serve them for the last 45 years.
“We’ve really been entwined in the community,” Kuzma said. “We’ve delivered lots of babies, saved people during cardiac arrests and stuff like that. And you really develop a close bond with the community when you’re part of their health care, and we just want to ... thank the people of Lewis County for trusting us to be part of their health care team. And we want to thank our employees for all of their hard work and dedication that they have done, as well.”
“We trust the fire departments to make the right decisions, and we trust the fire departments to continue taking care of the citizens in the area,” Grenier said. “We’ve been thankful for the opportunity to be able to serve the county for so long, and we’re only a county away if they ever want us back.”
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