Latest news RSS Feed
Print Story
E-mail StoryPine Mountain Club ambulance debate heats up
County advised not to pay for remote services
| Thursday, Feb 7 2008 10:05 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Feb 8 2008 8:31 AM
A simmering controversy over ambulance service in Pine Mountain Club and other remote Kern County communities seems sure to explode over the next week.
Our readers recommend:
Loading Stories
You can also watch the meeting live on KGOV, the county’s local cable television station. The station lists available channels at www.co.kern.ca.us/gsd/KGOV.
The board’s agenda as well as some background materials are available online at www.co.kern.ca.us/bos — as are phone numbers and e-mail addresses for your county supervisors.
Ross Elliott, county Emergency Medical Services director, has drafted a detailed report on how to provide paramedic service in those remote places.
His advice to the Kern County Board of Supervisors: Don't pay for paramedics and don't make ambulance companies staff remote areas.
The supervisors will hear Elliott's report during its 9 a.m. Tuesday meeting.
That advice isn't acceptable to Pine Mountain Club resident Carlos L'Dera.
"There's a lot of words I won't use," he said when told of Elliott's report. "I definitely don't agree with that."
LIVES AT STAKE
L'Dera hasn't gotten over the events of Jan. 24 when his wife, suffering a severe dog bite to her face, had to be evacuated out of Pine Mountain Club in a snow plow because a Hall Ambulance four-wheel-drive vehicle couldn't make the drive up from Frazier Park on snow-filled roads.
His wife waited, injured, for two hours before being evacuated.
Elliott said county firefighters, Hall Ambulance and Pine Mountain locals together solved a tough situation.
"The care provided was great, it wasn't quick, but it was the best everybody could do in the situation," he said.
But L'Dera said that isn't acceptable. Lives, he argued, are at stake in remote areas that don't have paramedic service.
"In a critical situation it's entirely possible -- and it has happened -- that someone would die," L'Dera said.
Elliott said remote communities simply can't expect the same level of service as urbanized areas.
"There aren't enough resources available to us to provide that level of coverage in every populated area of the county," he said.
THE REPORT
Elliott's report recommends against training firefighters stationed in 12 remote hamlets such as Pine Mountain Club, Stallion Springs, Glennville and Woody as paramedics.
"Devoting 60 paramedics at an incremental cost of $800,000 to reduce paramedic response times by 12-25 minutes for 408 calls per year is not an efficient use of resources," the report states.
And, on average, a paramedic is only beneficial in 15 percent of those calls, it says. Elliott also argues ambulance companies shouldn't be required to provide paramedics to those communities because the price is too high.
Everyone who takes an ambulance in Kern County would be required to pay an additional $200 for the service to subsidize rural areas' needs, Elliott estimated.
Hall Ambulance stationed an ambulance in the community for 15 months but withdrew it after spending $260,000, running 52 calls for service and making only $30,000, Hall officials have said.
JUDGMENT CALL
Residents in Pine Mountain Club have been fighting for years to get the county to provide firefighter paramedics or force Hall Ambulance to station an ambulance in their 4,000-person community. Hall Ambulance will observe the meeting with interest, officials said.
"The topic of paramedic service in remote areas is at this point a public policy matter that will be reviewed by the Board of Supervisors," said Hall spokesman Mark Corum.
Supervisors, Elliott said, can trump his recommendations and come up with a plan to provide paramedic services to remote areas. He understands, he said, that the decision requires a judgment about the relative value of taxpayer dollars and human life.
And that kind of judgment, he said, is better left to supervisors.