By Allison Petty
Herald & Review,
DECATUR, Ill. — City officials continue to push a proposal for the Decatur Fire Department to get into the ambulance business, saying the move will lead to faster response times and better service.
But Decatur Ambulance Service officials vehemently disagree, arguing they already provide quality service and the city’s move would put people out of work without bringing in as much revenue as projected.
The Decatur City Council is likely to hear both sides at a study session Monday. Several city officials and Fire Chief Jeff Abbott outlined the city’s proposal in a meeting with the Herald & Review editorial board Thursday.
“We don’t believe the city is adequately served by the current number of 24/7 ambulances,” Abbott said. “We believe we could increase the number of ambulances without adding additional firefighters to the department. And we think that our providing (advanced life support) service is a tremendous benefit to the citizens of Decatur.”
Interim City Manager Gregg Zientara, Assistant City Manager Billy Tyus and Mayor Mike McElroy also attended the meeting.
The fire department provides basic and intermediate life support when it responds to emergency medical calls. Sixteen firefighters are trained as paramedics who could perform advanced life support, Abbott said, if the department had an ambulance and necessary equipment.
Decatur Ambulance Service provides advanced life support. Because the ambulance service provides transport, it alone bills patients, even if the fire department assisted with the call.
As they spoke about the benefit to residents, city officials honed in on response times to emergency medical situations. The fire department typically responds in five minutes, they said. When the fire department arrives first to provide basic life support, the ambulance and its advanced life support must arrive in nine minutes to meet national standards.
The firefighters’ faster response time could lead to a higher survival rate if they were able to perform the advanced life support functions, officials said.
Of 27,747 emergency medical calls in the past five years, they said the fire department arrived first in 19,032 cases, about 68 percent.
But Ed Kemnitz, director of operations for Decatur Ambulance Service, said the service responds in less than eight minutes more than 90 percent of the time. He said the fire department may arrive first more often because it has seven stations throughout the city, while the ambulance service operates five stations throughout the county.
“I know that there are a lot of times we will get there ahead of them, or they will get there ahead of us, and it’s usually only by a minute or so,” he said.
The two sides also offered conflicting information as to how many ambulances the service runs.
Vice President Mike Burkham said the company runs six ambulances on Mondays through Saturdays, and five ambulances on Sundays, with one management unit in reserve.
City officials said they believed the ambulance service runs five ambulances at a time. They compared that to the number offered in Champaign, Sangamon, McLean and other neighboring counties, which run nine, 16 and 15 ambulances, respectively.
Adding one to the mix in Decatur would provide better service, city officials said. They want to add the ambulance at Decatur Fire Station No. 5, 225 E. Christine Drive, deeming it an underserved area based on the location of Decatur Ambulance Service stations.
They estimated the ambulance would handle 1,500 to 2,000 calls per year. Revenue from those calls would pay for the replacement of fire equipment as well as repaying the initial investment in an ambulance and related equipment.
But Burkham said he would be forced to take one ambulance out of service and lay off six full-time paramedics if the city proceeds.
“There’s not a mountain of money that’s being made by the ambulance service,” he said. “Basically, what I’m doing is creating jobs for paramedics. If they put an ambulance on, I have to take one off.”
He said the area near Fire Station No. 5 is not underserved, as the company has ambulance stations in Forsyth and another at Ravina Park Road and Oakland Avenue.
Radio and dispatching systems represent another issue between the two.
Decatur Ambulance Service receives emergency medical calls at the same time as the fire department but uses its own internal dispatchers and system.
City officials say that’s a problem because their dispatchers never know where all the ambulances are, and the fire department cannot “talk” to the ambulances over their radio system. Zientara said the city would move to amend its ordinance and require the company, and any other ambulance service in the city, to join the city’s communication systems.
Abbott said the firefighters would still work closely with the ambulance service on emergency medical calls in most areas of the city.
“We’re still going to provide the same service, the same support, the same everything. Seventy-five to 80 percent of the time, we’re going to be assisting them like we do today,” he said. “But we’ll know where they’re at, they’ll know where we’re at and we need to get on the same radio system so we can talk to each other in emergencies.”
Burkham said he invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in his own system because he did not want to join the StarCom21 radio system used by the city and Macon County Sheriff’s Office.
“They’re trying to bankrupt me, then,” he said, when told about the proposed ordinance change that would force him to join the StarCom system. “I’ve got a major, major amount of money invested in a radio system that’s better than theirs. If they would require me to go on their radio system … it would be all this money wasted.”
Kemnitz said the ambulance service keeps track of all its ambulance locations and maintains a link with the city to see fire calls when they are dispatched. He said the company could also make its ambulance locations available to the city dispatchers.
“They’ve never asked for that,” he said.
Decatur Ambulance Service employs 105 people in Central Illinois, about 70 percent of whom live in Macon County, Kemnitz said.
Zientara said the city is not out to take business from the private sector but acknowledged that every dollar the city gains is one the ambulance service does not. However, he said the move would benefit all residents of Decatur.
“We are here not to compete with them, but rather to provide an improved service to the community. We think this demonstrates that,” he said. “And we think that providing a better service to the community basically outweighs any negative argument one could make about interfering in a private sector enterprise.”
———
©2015 the Herald & Review (Decatur, Ill.)