Allen County will enter a five-year contract with American Medical Response (AMR) to provide countywide EMS services starting Aug. 1.
Commissioners approved the contract on Tuesday, pending a few details still to be worked through.
The county will pay an annual fee of $1.8 million for the service and provide five ambulances. The ambulances will need to be outfitted with cameras.
After three years, the county and AMR will re-evaluate.
Not included in the contract is a plan for transferring patients from Allen County Regional Hospital to out-of-county facilities. As it stands, the contract only covers 911 emergency services.
Hospital officials expressed concern about that missing piece of the puzzle, as about 500 transfers were made last year.
Commissioners were optimistic a solution will be found.
“We’ve had some good discussion about that,” Commissioner Jerry Daniels said.
AMR, under its parent company Global Medical Response, will operate two full-time ambulances and staff, with another ambulance and a medically equipped SUV to be shared with Linn County.
Craig Isom, program director with AMR who presented the contract, said the company will start advertising for positions within the next week or so. He expects AMR will need to hire about six full-time emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and six full-time paramedics, along with part-time staff for each.
He didn’t publicly discuss possible salaries but said those amounts will be listed in advertisements. Employees likely will start training in July.
Ambulances would be stationed at Iola, Humboldt and Moran.
Units also can respond from Linn County in a shared-service agreement. An operations manager will determine where to send ambulances based on need. For example, if all of Allen County’s units are busy and Linn County is not, an ambulance will be shifted from there to a station in Allen County and vice versa.
“You use the assets you have and put them in a position where the calls are coming,” Isom said. “We use system status management in all of our systems but this is one of the first where we’re sharing between two counties.”
AMR has worked with Linn County since 2007.
