Ambulance Company, County May Join Forces

Under a plan that could shave about two minutes off some response times, the Ventura County Fire Department may join with the county’s largest ambulance company to expand paramedic services.

The plan, which supervisors will consider at Tuesday’s board meeting, would mean as many as 14 firefighters could become certified paramedics.

All 420 county firefighters are trained to provide basic life support, which consists mainly of CPR. But more advanced aid, including administering lifesaving medications, must come from a paramedic.

“People usually think a fire department is a group of people standing by waiting to put a fire out,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “In reality, 90% of their calls are for emergency medical service. And a firetruck, because they’re so close, is usually the first on the scene. But they can’t do anything, really. They have to wait for an ambulance.”

For more than 30 years, the county has contracted for ambulance service with American Medical Response. The growing population has made it increasingly difficult for the company to reach all areas of the county within eight minutes--the period considered critical for saving a life. Most difficult to service have been areas of the east county, including Thousand Oaks and Westlake, where call volumes are the highest and the company’s 14 ambulances struggle to meet demand, said Douglas Emslie, operations manager for the ambulance company.

Emslie said arming firefighters in some of the county’s 31 stations with paramedic certificates would bolster emergency service.

“We are looking at huge growth in Ventura County,” Emslie said. “As a private organization, we could go out and deploy more resources. Or we could orchestrate a strategic alliance to be a steppingstone, a bridge, that would make use of underutilized resources.”

The added help could drop response times in some areas of the east county to as low as five minutes, Emslie said. All patients, however, would still have to wait for an ambulance before being transported to hospitals.

“With the fire district stepping in, we are simply enhancing the existing system with additional paramedics in the field,” said Fire Chief Bob Roper, who has lobbied to meld the two services since taking over as the county’s head fire official three years ago.

Roper said the idea initially arose out of frustration.

Firefighters often arrived at a scene but couldn’t offer any real medical help. Roper noted incidents such as the case of a man who fell into a trench at a work site and needed an IV while firefighters worked to free him. But the site was too precarious to allow anyone but a trained firefighter near the trench, Roper said.

“That’s a perfect example of how we would have liked to do something and couldn’t,” Roper said. “And it’s one of the biggest reasons this is important.”

The plan was modeled in part after an arrangement started about four years ago between American Medical Response and the city of Ventura, Roper said.

Still, getting the plan before the Board of Supervisors for consideration was not easy. Some past board members and associates of American Medical Response worried the Fire Department was trying to compete with the private company for business, Roper said.

“By forming this partnership, we’ve been able to alleviate some of those concerns,” Roper said. “Now it’s just seen as something that’s best for the public. It just took the right people sitting down and talking.”

Roper estimated that about 72% of the county’s calls are emergency-medical related. And 84% of those are handled by American Medical Response.

The county Fire Department and American Medical Response would share the estimated $1.2 million it would cost to certify the firefighters. Firefighters with paramedic training would also be entitled to a pay raise, between 5% and 15% depending on experience, Roper said.

The plan, which calls for about a dozen firefighters to receive paramedic training the first year, also recommends all department firefighters increase their medical training. Firefighters, the report said, should become advanced emergency medical technicians, qualified to administer defibrillator shocks and dole out some medications.