AMR Looses another contract

[Jerrod Vanlandingham]

AMR looses Boulder County, CO contract to small time provider. PrideMark of Denver won the bid to start providing service in March of 1999.

[cla123]

OWWWCH!! That hits a little close to home for AMR,doesn't it? Aren't they based in Colorado?

[Jerrod Vanlandingham]

Not sure where they are based, but I know they have had the Boulder County contract for a long time. PrideMark will work 12hr shifts instead of 24's and will not have have a base. They are supposed to be mobile the whole shift. They will do shift change at one of the local firehouses.

[Medic 25]

Not real sure about this, is it a good thing or not? Who is the community behind, and who do they want for a ambulance service? will they provide the same or greater quality of pt care and what about $ wise? I know our service is always fighting to stay inservice even when the community is behind us. We have had others offer us both the BLS and ALS, and droped the ball. Where does a hospital based service stand against, AMR and other's like them?

[Phillip Gates]

Their home office is in Aurora, Co. and AMR elected not to renew it's contract with the city because of "future financal losses". This was reported by Gary Ludwig, Chief Paramedic of the St. Louis Fire Dept. and is a contributing editor for some Fire and EMS magazines. The article he wrote on this can be found at- http://www.merginet.com/tgp/ludwig/ludwig-9805-5.htm

[bdfiremedic]

As of April 1, 1999 AMR stopped providing service to Decatur, Alabama. The company that AMR/Careline/Laidlaw bought was in service for over 15 yrs. During that time the company always made money. However AMR could not get the 15 to 20 % profit required to stay open so they shut there door. The one good thing was at least the employee's had plenty of notice a whole 2 1/2 weeks. There have also been serveral areas in Alabama that AMR has pulled out of. They have also recently lost emergency contract for the city of B'ham Alabama. If this trend continues it can not be long before they pull out of the state. I hope not but it seems that it is headed that way.

[HHoffman]

This is more proof that for profit EMS can not work. Money can not be the bottom line when saving lives!!! When all is said and done Fire Based EMS will be the answer.

[jc1965]

Here in Santa Clara County, Ca (San Jose and Silicon Valley) our pros at County EMS are finally "responsive to system alternatives" from the ridiculous system status of the past. We are one of the origional AMR counties in the nation and now we currently have the worst ambulance response times of any metro area in California. The county fire chiefs are exploring a joint public/private partnership with Rural/Metro. AMR is on thin ise in most of the Bay Area counties.

[MD FF EMT-P]

Glad I did not jump too soon. I was offered a position in Richmond, VA and did not want to uproot my family yet. Whew!!

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[Pickhead]

The City of Fort Worth TX Emergancy Advisory Board Voted not to renew a contract with AMR (operating under the city owed trade name "Medstar") and instead rewarded the contract to rural/metro. Poor response times, inability to retain medics, and to many complants by citizens to count. AMR's brilliant system of trying to guess when, where, and what times emergnacys will happen left us dumb FF's with patients and no one to come pick them up.

Greg ****e
Fort Worth Fire Fighters Assn. IAFF#440

[BURNSEMS]

Just one more stike against Private Service, I agree with Pickhead Ft Worth is a prime Example of Private E.M.S. failure to meet the increasing need of the public based on monatary loss, This is what happens when you put money in front of the Patints that pay that money.

[bdfiremedic]

Well AMR is in the middle of selling another operation in Alabama. They are selling to EmergStat the entire Operation in Florence. If they keep up this pace they will be out of alabama by the end of year,,, If we are lucky.....

[TEKRSQ]

Personally, I think it should be illegal to have a "for profit" EMS system. In my city, every ambulance and all equipment (every band-aid) is owned by the city under an "EMS Authority". The "Authority" bids out for a service to operate the system while the "Authority" oversees it and makes sure they are meeting the contract criteria. All personell are employeed by the provider (AMR in this case). It is an all ALS system with BLS fire dept first responder. They also run all the non-emergency runs within the city limits. I work for the fire dept and cannot tell you how many time I've had to wait 10 mins for a transport unit. Night-time is a disaster waiting to happen. They use their "system status management" and cut down to the bare minimum number of units. A multiple patient mva and the city is empty.

AMR's employee relations leave a lot to be desired also. Because of the "authority", AMR has a monopoly inside the city limits. No other private company can run anything (emergency or non-emergency) within the city limits. Therefore, because there is no competition, AMR basically has the attitude "if you don't like it, leave". I believe they have a revolving door. Very seldom do you see people for more than a few months. The quality of care has dropped significantly because of this, but AMR will never admit it to themselves or the public. There are still some excellent medics, but as a whole, they suck.

Ok, I'll stop babbling eventhough I haven't even mentioned transport prices, sitting on street corners in an ambulance 12hrs a day becuase you have no stations, or any of the other idiotic stuff the employees have to put up with. LET'S HEAR IT FOR "FOR PROFIT EMS"!!!!!

[jc1965]

You guys have to wait 10 minutes for an AMR ambulance? Try 13-15 minutes in my area. The county contract for AMR is 12 min. if fire is ALS. Cities say the 12 min. is from time of call to time in scene. AMR says it is the time a crewmember (EMT or Medic) answers the call to the time they arrive on scene. They don't account for dispatch time!

[BURNSEMS]

After approx 10 yrs of working for Private Services in and around Dallas I can see the good and Bad,If you have bad response times then it becomes a system wide wide problem.If a Service as Large as A.M.R. cannot supervise and provide service it shows directly that Management only cares about the bottom dollar, ask what the crews make then compare that to the service charges and then add in any monies paid by medicare and City Government someone at the top is getting rich off of the Trauma and Sick calls that your Citizens Suffer and we get stuck wondering where is the Service we pay for!!!!!!!

[firemedic1]

I happen to be a part-time paramedic with Pridemark Paramedics working in Boulder. The shifts are great, but we do not switch shifts at local firehouses!! We have our own base! The 12hr shifts get long sometimes, because you are stuck in an ambulance, but the response times are awesome. Our average response time in the Boulder area is 4 1/2 minutes.

[bdfiremedic]

Until recent I have worked for private ambulance services for about 7 and a half years. I even went up in managment at one time. I was lucky to realize that the way the big companies work, does not go along with the principle that i stand for, which is patient care. When i first started in this field i worked for a mom and pop operations. The owner at that time had a theroy that worked real well. He called it a simple three rules. Take care of your employees', require good patient care, and the rest will be taken care of. It worked really well. When he sold out he was the seventh largest in the nation.

The big companies worry about percentage of profit period. When i was in managment I was told to cut trucks to raise this percentage up because we were not making enough profit and our response compliance was too good. That we should maintain at 90 % compliance not the 96 % we were running, and 12% profit was not the 15 required.......

I now work for a fire Dept. I do not know if this is the best resource for ems or if it needs to be a third service, but private is not the way for ems, it is the way for nonemergency transport.......

[RES1CUE96]

AMR is loosing contracts everywhere!!! They have lost the Basic Life support Contract in the City of Wilmington, DE and laid off over 150 people in there Philadelphia operations due to bad management practices. It is time for more fire service EMS!!!

Jack Wilson
Wilmington, De

[phyrngn]

Well, I hate to sound like all the rest, but I cannot stand for-profit EMS. My city is served by Hurl...I'm sorry. Rural/Metro. Their turnover is high, patient care battles ensue between the firefighters and private providers, and, worst of all...our Medical Director LOVES them! Every little thing that he or his cronies implements really does not favor the patient (or even the FD for that matter) at all. It's the almighty buck. Recently, they implemented the Clawson (I hope that I spelled that right out of respect) Priority Dispatch System. I agree with priority dispatch if it's done properly, but in this case, it is used to justify slow response times and only having three ambulances for 250,000+ people. In fact, Clawson's company sent a letter to our EMS's Governing Agency and Medical Director stating that they manipulated his system (long story to short) for their own needs. I know that their are a lot of maladaptive old fire service fogeys out there who would disagree, but I feel that EMS is a natural extension of the fire service and should not be provided for profit.

These are just MY opinions.