Private Firm to Take Over Ventura Ambulance Service Today

VENTURA — A handful of emergency calls were spotted on the ledger at Fire Station 1 as paramedics there filled out their last detail in the city’s short-lived experiment in providing ambulance services.

Now, the dozen paramedics who work for the city Fire Department are looking for new jobs.

Some have a shot at the two or three openings for firefighter/paramedics in the department, said Mike Harris, director of the department’s Emergency Medical Service.

Many of the others are looking into getting jobs with American Medical Response, the private firm that will take over ambulance service in the city today.

Having cut response times by two minutes and costs by 40%, Harris said he was pleased with the job the city did over the last year.

“I’m very proud,” he said. “In a perfect world the decision would have been made just on its merits.”

The change to private service comes on the heels of a landmark state Supreme Court ruling in late June that declared that counties, not cities, had the right to decide who will provide emergency medical services.

The court said counties must be able to control ambulance service so that they can provide better and more efficient emergency medical response services.

Last month the county Board of Supervisors in a split vote agreed to contract with American Medical Response, a subsidiary of Canadian-based Laidlaw Medical Transportation Inc.

Although all ambulance services will be provided by AMR as of today, paramedics stationed on city firetrucks will provide first response medical care for the next 45 days as part of an agreement worked out between the two entities, Harris said.

Fire Department officials are in negotiations to extend the agreement beyond the 45-day period, essentially having American Medical Response and the Fire Department share in the emergency response care, he said.

“They could take advantage of our quicker response times,” he said.

But the agreement would also require AMR to share its revenues with the city to pay for the paramedics, so there are no guarantees that something amenable to both sides will be worked out.

Meanwhile, the city paramedics are looking for work.

“All 12 of us would like one of the firefighter/paramedic positions, but there are not enough of those to go around,” said paramedic Paul Willette, who works out of Fire Station 1 on Ventura Avenue. Willette is scheduled to interview for a job today at American Medical Response.

“We all took a lot of pride in what we were able to do in the last year. It just didn’t work out as we would have hoped,” he said.