Feature Article March 13, 2003
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb Home FMB contemplates taking ambulance service in houseby Jeff GreenA staff report to the Frontenac Management Board (FMB) recommended the responsibility for administering ambulance services within Frontenac County and the City of Kingston be taken on by the FMB itself.
The service has been administered for the past two years through a four-county administrative structure, but this arrangement has come to an end as some of the other partners have decided to run their services on their own.
The FMB had the responsibility for land ambulance dowloaded to it from the provincial government in January 2001. It has contracted ambulance services to Kingston Regional Ambulance Service (based at Hotel Dieu Hospital), the Parham Ambulance Service, and the Wolfe Island Ambulance Service until the end of 2003
After that date, the FMB could either take over the service and run it themselves, re-negotiate the contracts, or extend the contracts with the three providers.
Complicating matters considerably is the increasingly strained relationship between the FMB and the City of Kingston, which pays 84% of the cost for the service.
On February 25, Kingston City Council passed a motion which requested that the FMB allow the City of Kingston to participate in a joint FMB/City review of land ambulance service delivery options to identify a recommended option, with comunity stakeholder involvement in all steps of the process. If this review is not undertaken, the motion authorizes the city to resolve this, using mediation, arbitration, or other legal remedies, as may be warranted.
FMB Chief Administrative Officer Elizabeth Fulton says the FMB shares all pertinent information with the city, but we dont see the need for a joint review. We have undertaken similar enterprises in the past, without the need for a joint review. Fulton also points out that Hastings County has brought its ambulance service in house, and Lennox & Addington is following suit.
The provincial government regulates ambulance service, and the FMB as the service provider is charged with meeting provincial standards for arrival times and levels of paramedic service. According to Fulton, "since we took over the service, we have been able to successfully decrease the waiting times from where they were when the province ran the service directly.
The difference between operating the service under contract to the three providers and running it directly seems to be one of cost control. The contracts that exist with the three providers have budgeted amounts, but a provider can go over budget and the FMB is required by the province to pay for the over runs. This has been costly, specifically in the case of the Hotel Dieu Service. On the other hand, taking over would mean paying the increased costs associated with having 100 municipal employees, as opposed to contracts with independent private enterprises.
When the issue was raised at recent meeting of the Rural Urban Liason Committee (RULAC), a joint committee of the City of Kingston and the FMB, it brought back some of the simmering tensions between the FMB and the city that go back to the debacle over the Fairmount home redevelopment project of last summer, which required mediation to settle.
Kingston Mayor Isabel Turner said this is not the way to treat your largest customer.
According to Dave Gemmill of the Parham Ambulance Service, if the FMB wants to take over the service, they had better make that decision within the next month, because it will take some time to set it up.
As far as what has been happening with ambulance service recently, Gemmill says he has found working with the FMB to be very smooth, and beneficial to the community, with the service improvements weve put through.
Both the FMB and RULAC meet later this month.
