Pinellas County is looking for ways to provide more effective and affordable emergency medical services.
CLEARWATER - Pinellas County continues to look for a more effective and affordable way to provide emergency medical services.
The Board of Pinellas County Commissioners, sitting as the Emergency Services Authority, voted unanimously on June 16 to take no action on a “hybrid transport proposal” from the Council of Professional Firefighters.
Commissioners Susan Latvala and John Morroni were absent.
Firefighters initially presented the proposal to the authority on March 20 when commissioners approved two resolutions intended to set a framework for increasing efficiencies and reducing costs of EMS.
The county is looking for ways to reduce an $18 million budget gap without continuing to dip into the EMS reserve fund.
The Council of Professional Firefighters, local fire chiefs and city managers stated objections to the resolutions and all said there had to be a better way.
Complaints against the county’s resolutions included a potential increase in response times, job losses and closure of fire stations. The council’s hybrid proposal supposedly would have created efficiencies and cost savings without any adverse impacts.
Commissioners expressed interest in the hybrid proposal and directed staff to review it and make a recommendation.
Craig Hare, Pinellas County EMS manager, told the board that an ad-hoc committee consisting of city managers, fire chiefs and county administration met on April 22 to listen to a presentation on the firefighter’s proposal. The committee subsequently created a report of its analysis and a recommendation to accept the report but take no action.
The committee concluded that the “hybrid study as presented is too aggressive and not fact based,” Hare said. The committee also concluded that the hybrid model did have potential for efficiencies and recommended that the model be part of a broader study.
The committee recommended that “further study of consolidation and streamlining of service delivery should occur, but the committee does not recommend instituting a partial fire-based transport program as a cost-saving measure until such time as it can be thoroughly and deliberately studied and fact based conclusions reached, including the possibility of a pilot test before implementation,” the report said.
Pinellas County currently has a monopoly on providing EMS services. Hare said thanks to the monopoly, revenue generated from non-emergency ambulance transport helps pay for emergency services. He said it was important that nothing take away from providing enough business to the ambulance service provider to jeopardize the county’s ability to maintain its monopoly. Allowing local fire stations to do more emergency transports, per the hybrid proposal, could endanger the current set up, he said.
Another flaw in the hybrid proposal, per the committee’s analysis, was the potential impact to fire suppression services - one of the complaints voiced by fire chiefs and city managers in regard to the county’s resolutions passed on March 20.
The committee also reviewed workload on EMS units, the need for additional transport resources and concerns about integration with computer aided medical technicians.
Hare said the committee found that the firefighter’s proposal did not include all costs thus negating some potential affordability.
Commissioners Ken Welch and Neil Brickfield asked about the time given to study and analysis of the hybrid proposal. Brickfield wanted assurances that county staff had not weighed in with an opinion prior to the committee’s analysis.
County Administrator Bob LaSala said county staff did not participate in the deliberation of the proposal. He said staff did put together a paper based on the committee’s concerns.
He said the committee met and listened to a presentation from the firefighter’s council followed by a review of the proposal on the same day. The committee then presented guidance to county staff who prepared a draft of the conclusions and recommendation. The committee then met to review staff’s draft.
Welch asked what staff proposed to do to make the system better and as affordable as possible.
LaSala said as soon as next year’s budget was completed in July, a consultant would be hired to review the EMS system. He said the study would not include a review of fire services but would look at the relationship between EMS and fire.
“That would set the stage for a follow up effort to look at fire services,” LaSala said.
“I’d like to discuss this with you to challenge,” Welch said. “I’d like to see a more holistic approach.”
Commissioner Karen Seel agreed with Welch.
“They’re (EMS and fire) intertwined,” she said. “We need to find the most efficient way to address them together.”
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