Virginia Authority Cuts Ties to American Medical Response

Oct. 13--Citing a failure to meet emergency response times in six of the past seven months, the Richmond Ambulance Authority board voted unanimously yesterday to terminate its contract with the company that manages the city's ambulance response and emergency medical personnel.

The decision to dump American Medical Response just one year into its five-year contract means that the authority will assume management of roughly 168 employees, including about 90 paramedics and emergency medical technicians.

AMR, the largest private provider of ambulance services in the country and a subsidiary of Colorado-based Emergency Medical Response Corp., was due to be paid $9 million this year. AMR had provided ambulance services in Richmond for 11 years.

Ambulance authority Executive Director Jerry Overton said the transition, which will take effect Nov. 18, should have no negative impact on city residents.

Rather, he said, the hope is that direct management of emergency personnel and the day-to-day operations of the response system will produce a more stable work environment for employees and lead to better deployment of ambulances that bring faster response times to emergency calls.

The authority owns all the assets that AMR was using -- the ambulances and the equipment on them, the communications system and the technology infrastructure.

Under its contract with the authority, AMR guaranteed that it would be able to respond to life-threatening emergency calls within 9 minutes, 90 percent of the time. Similar time and percentage guarantees were also in place for response to emergency calls of lower priority.

For six of the past seven months, however, Overton said, AMR failed to meet the contracted standards in a number of response categories. Response for September, he said, was even lower than the previous month.

"It is a performance-based contract, and we take that very seriously," Overton said. "We have very strict response times, and the response-time provisions have not been met."

When trouble surfaced this year, the authority notified the company that it was in default of its contract. Penalties were assessed totaling $500,000.

Overton said the authority would seek to claim an additional $500,000 from a performance bond put up by the company to back up its contractual obligations.

"I think that it is probably a good decision," said Richmond City Councilwoman Kathy C. Graziano, who sits on the authority board. "I don't think it's going to be easy for the ambulance authority to carry out; however, a contract has been breached, and things have not improved -- if anything, they had gotten worse," she added.

"For the well-being of the citizens, we had to do it."

Like Overton, Graziano said the difficulty in retaining employees and questions of where ambulances were located played a role in the failure to reach the contracted response-time goals.

In a statement, AMR expressed disappointment in the board's decision, acknowledged staffing difficulties and said they would work toward an orderly transition of their services to the ambulance authority.

"Although public safety has never been compromised, and we have made progress in addressing the authority's concerns, we have continued to have staffing challenges related to caregiver profiles which have affected our ability to meet the stringent requirements of the contract," Tracy Thomas, head of AMR operations in Richmond, said in the statement.

Graziano said the board will spend the next few weeks before the transition assessing what, if any, fiscal impact the takeover will have on the city, as well as research liability issues it may face by running the system itself.

Overton said it is the authority's intention to retain the ambulance response personnel who now currently work for AMR, provided they passed background and drug tests.

The Richmond Ambulance Authority is a government entity created by the state legislature to provide emergency medical services to the city of Richmond. It receives funding from the city, and its board is appointed by City Council.

Contact Jim Nolan at (804) 649-6061 or jnolan@timesdispatch.com

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