By Dave Dawson
Jacksonville Journal-Courier
JACKSONVILLE, Ill. — A proposal for a second ambulance to provide emergency service to Jacksonville is headed toward reality after a city commission recommended a second license be granted.
The Municipal Ambulance Commission unanimously recommended that the Jacksonville City Council grant a license to ECHO Response EMS to provide emergency service to the city after it was first proposed six months ago.
In addition to the license, the commission recommended some changes to the ordinance governing ambulances which were part of the motion to grant the license. Discussion of the changes dominated the Thursday morning meeting at the Jacksonville Municipal Building.
The commission’s recommendation can only be enacted by the council, whose next meeting is Monday. However, the first reading of the ordinance will likely have to wait until the council’s Aug. 26 meeting and likely won’t be adopted until September.
Significantly, after the meeting adjourned, Roger D. Campbell, president of LifeStar Ambulance Service in Centralia, and Danny Kloever, who co-owns Pana-based ECHO, exchanged business cards and pledged to work together to serve Jacksonville’s ambulance needs.
Based in the 948 N. Main St. building that formerly housed America Ambulance Service, ECHO has been handling patient transfers for Jacksonville Memorial Hospital since August 2023. It offered to provide an additional ambulance for emergency services in February.
Under its agreement with the city, LifeStar is required to have three fully staffed ambulances on duty around the clock. From Jan. 1, 2023, until the beginning of 2024, LifeStar met the city ordinance 2% of the time and 80% of the time had only two units available.
The meeting began with Robb Mudd, commission chair, asking the other members if two ambulance services were needed in Jacksonville. It is important to look ahead at our needs and not revisit the past, he said.
“More is better. There are still waiting periods, but I believe another service would benefit the 911 system as well as the people of the community,” said Michael Hopper, a captain in the Jacksonville Fire Department, echoing the sentiments of others on the commission.
“The challenge is real for everyone, everywhere. More is not always better and there are no easy solutions, but I would hate to not allow that additional license,” said Phil McCarty, director of Jacksonville-Morgan County Emergency Management.
“We need to know we have two staffed emergency ambulances on the ready at all times. Our responsibility is to address the issues of the community holistically.” McCarty said. “The solution may not be perfect, but we need to do what can to take care of the community’s needs.”
McCarty went through an overview of the ordinance with a document that listed comments from each service about the changes as well as the city’s responses.
While most of the revisions were minor, other parts of the ordinance were changed so they adhered to standards enacted by the Illinois Department of Public Health. However, one of the main sticking points with LifeStar was a schedule of fines for insufficient coverage.
The fine structure gave two days’ grace each month, but fines started at $200 a day for three to five days below standard and topped at $700 for each day not fully staffed after 11 days.
Campbell wondered why fines were necessary because there were none applied to America Ambulance when they left the city in 2018. He also said his company had been violating the current ordinance for a year and never faced a fine.
Since the first of the year, LifeStar has beefed up its presence in Jacksonville, adding bays to its building at 524 S. Main St., buying an additional ambulance, and hiring more employees. Campbell said the necessary coverage under the current ordinance is now being provided most of the time.
McCarty said he thought fines would be needed only if there was a recurring pattern of behavior that left the city short of necessary coverage and not for occasional lapses that had minimal effect on operations. The main thing is ensuring adequate coverage for both emergency services and patient transfers.
“We don’t want to run any business out of town. If something doesn’t work, we can look at changing it so it does work,” Mudd said.
Another problem for LifeStar concerned the rotation of calls. The commission had talked earlier about whether there should be a strict rotation of either who’s next or who’s closest. Campbell objected to being told how to move his ambulances.
“Rotation of calls does not need to be inked into the ordinance. We can leave it vague and say we’ll rotate calls but base it on the situation. It’s better to keep it out of the government process because any change could take six weeks or more to move it into the ordinance,” McCarty said.
It was then that Kloever said ECHO was not going anywhere and considered Jacksonville its home.
“ECHO will always have a 911 unit available for emergency calls in Jacksonville. I want to work across the table,” said Kloever, motioning toward Campbell and other LifeStar employees.
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