By Kevin Hassler
Enid News & Eagle
ENID, Okla. — The city of Enid has hired a consultant to look at ways to make local ambulance service more sustainable and efficient.
City commissioners heard a discussion about the situation during their study session on Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024. Speakers before the commission were Jimmy Johnson, owner of Life EMS for more than 50 years; Enid Fire Department Chief Jason Currier; and Steven Athey, the consultant hired by the city to look at the situation.
All three said that the situation facing Enid is not unique and that ambulance services across the country are dealing with such things as lack of payments for services and inability to hire enough employees.
Johnson told commissioners he had been meeting with City Manager Jerald Gilbert, Currier and Enid Police Department Chief Bryan Skaggs “... going over the different issues that we face and how we can try to fix them.”
Gilbert said “The world’s changed,” especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, with inflation driving prices up and agencies having trouble hiring people.
“Those are challenges that aren’t just Enid problems or Garfield County problems,” he said. “Those are challenges that are nationwide problems.”
Life EMS is a private company that has never received any form of subsidy from the city, Gilbert said. City ordinance states the city requires two ambulances in city limits at all times, and response time to 911 calls will be 8 minutes and 59 seconds. Local hospitals also use Life EMS for patient transfers.
“I know we’re not meeting that some of the time,” Gilbert said.
The issues
Currier said issues really began cropping up in the past few years.
“The changes in ambulance service in Enid became apparent to us a couple of years ago,” he said. “Since we work with them every day, we began to see an increase in wait times on the calls. I began to meet with the owner of Life EMS to try to understand the issues, what the issues may be and how we might be able to fix them.
“I quickly learned that this is not just a problem for Enid or just in Oklahoma, but across the country.”
Several issues came together to negatively impact ambulances services nationwide, Currier said, including “increasing claims denials by insurance companies, a significant increase in non-paying patients and increasing operating costs.”
Currier said he looked at other ambulance services to find out how they were dealing with the challenges.
“Doing this, we found that our system here in Enid is simply outdated,” he said.
“Our city ordinance is ineffective, our dispatch system is inefficient and we have never provided any supplemental funding to our ambulance service,” he said. “All the successful EMS systems that we have studied provide some kind of subsidy to support their ambulance services.”
Currier pointed to Enid’s dispatch system to highlight why he said it was inefficient. When a call comes into 911, the dispatcher is required to get certain information, which can take up to 90 seconds, before the call is then transferred to Life EMS, which also must gather information. It can be up to three minutes, Currier said, before an ambulance is dispatched.
The study
Athey has been a consultant for 27 years and has been involved in the EMS business since the 1970s, he said.
He said he and his team will gather information about EMS operations in Enid and work to find some possible solutions.
“I can promise you it won’t be a single answer,” Athey told commissioners. “By the time we’re done here in 120 days, we’ll have options for you.
“... in the end, we’ll have a plan for sustainability.”
In answer to a question from Mayor David Mason about any EMS services Athey knows about that have successfully found a way forward, Athey mentioned Western Payne County Ambulance Trust Authority, which includes the cities of Stillwater, Perkins and Glencoe.
The authority adds a charge for ambulance service on water bills, Athey said. People can opt out, he said, but about 90% have continued the payment. Anyone who opts out still will be provided ambulance service, he said, but must pay the full cost.
“You want to get to something that is self-repairable, that works today and works tomorrow, and that you could see it continuing for the very long future,” Athey said.
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