Presentations were made during a City Council committee meeting Monday by both the ambulance company that wants to start serving Pine Bluff residents and the existing ambulance company that would like to keep its exclusive contract.
As of Friday, there was no proposal on the table to change a 1999 ordinance that awarded the sister companies Emergency Ambulance Service Inc. and Ambulance Transport Service an exclusive contract to run ambulance calls within the Pine Bluff city limits.
City Attorney Althea Hadden-Scott said a draft ordinance was prepared by her office to show Galbraith Emergency Medical Services Ambulance Service Inc. of Clinton what changes would be necessary before they would be allowed to serve clients in Pine Bluff, but neither any of the aldermen nor the mayor has stepped forward to sponsor the proposal, which would be the necessary first step before it could be considered by the full council.
Both groups were given time to make a presentation during the council Public Safety Committee meeting on Monday.
GEMS presentation
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
GEMS Director of Operations John Galbraith said his company has already set up an office at 1726 W. 42nd Ave. near Jefferson Regional Medical Center. They have been answering calls that have been made to their office from White Hall and the county, but will not respond to calls in the Pine Bluff city limits until the law is changed, he said.
Galbraith said he is asking the city council to change the ordinance to allow them to do calls in the city limits. He said they do not want to be on the rotation to receive 9-1-1 calls for the city. They are, however, trying to contact the appropriate county authorities to get on their rotation.
“We’ve been asked, even begged, by many nursing homes to come do business there, and we’re hamstrung by the current contract that is in place, the one from 1999,” Galbraith said.
Galbraith said they current have one paramedic truck and one basic truck at their existing location. They would eventually like to expand to have three additional locations across the city.
“Essentially all we want is the ability to compete. … Test us — test whether we are worthy of your community, whatever is the standard of care in this community that you feel like we need to meet, we will meet and we will exceed,” Galbraith said, adding that he felt their presence would lift the overall standard of care.
Alderman Bill Brumett asked why the company chose Pine Bluff.
“Over the years I’ve just heard this and that, and it started becoming a little more apparent that there was a need,” Galbraith said. “We would do a transfer down here. A hospital would indicate that there was a wait, there was a lack of respect. There was a host of things that we felt like if we put an ambulance service together and came to Pine Bluff that we would be greeted with open arms, and for the most part, we have been.”
EASI presentation
EASI CEO Kenneth Starnes gave the presentation to the committee on behalf of his company, which has been operating in Pine Bluff for more than 40 years.
Starnes said that while competition may be beneficial in some industries, it is not in emergency medical services.
“Exclusivity is the norm, not the exception in EMS. … Street-level competition is considered unwise and dangerous to the public by any professional EMS organization you talk to and by any EMS professional you talk to,” Starnes said.
Starnes provided a quote to this effect from the American Ambulance Association guidelines.
“A system that utilizes multiple EMS providers is both expensive to run and dangerous for the patients,” Starnes said, quoting from the organization’s guidelines. “They say this about 10 or 12 different ways in there. Sometimes they say it’s dangerous, hazardous, ill-advised — they never say that it’s a good alternative system design. And they go on to say that should include both emergency calls and non-emergency calls for financial stability.”
Starnes also quoted similar advice from the Arkansas Ambulance Association. Their guidelines also go on to state that in communities where there is an existing exclusive contract, like Pine Bluff, the organization considers the establishment of unwarranted competition to be “unethical and unprofessional” and “serve only to undermine the integrity of a system charged with the safety and the welfare of the public.”
Moving to the local level, Starnes quoted two doctors from Jefferson Regional Medical Center.
Starnes quoted Dr. John Skowronski, JRMC’s medical director of the emergency department and the person who designed the pre-hospital protocols that are followed by EASI and the Pine Bluff Fire and Emergency Services Department.
“He says that he strongly encourages enforcing the current city ordinance for a single ambulance provider, with that provider being EASI,” Starnes said.
He also quoted Dr. Michael Sutherland, medical director for trauma services at JRMC and president of the Southeast Arkansas Trauma Advisory Council.
“Having multiple providers and pre-hospital emergency room procedures in one community creates a significant risk for the citizens of the community,” Starnes said.
Starnes also quoted state and local legislation recommending against having multiple ambulance services in the same area, saying that all of these things were behind what led the city to adopt its 1999 ordinance establishing the exclusive contract.
“This ordinance has allowed us to invest literally millions of dollars in this community,” Starnes said.
Without an exclusive ordinance to provide a certain amount of financial security, Starnes said it would make it more difficult to make the big investments that are needed to keep the ambulances and support technology up to date.
As examples, Starnes said EASI made a $200,000 upgrade to its dispatch center two years ago. They currently have 18 ambulances in the county and replace about five a year at a cost of $200,000 each.
Starnes said that the statistics for the service show that they are actually on calls for an average of 2.4 hours for every 10 hours that an ambulance is staffed, adding that is within normal national levels and does not indicate people are being under served.