The Woodside Fire Protection District, which includes Portola Valley as well as Woodside and nearby unincorporated areas, is no longer in danger of losing its firefighter-staffed ambulance.
After months of negotiations, the district last week managed to almost double its reimbursement for staffing an ambulance. The new amount — $350,000 in annual funding from the Joint Powers Authority that oversees the county’s emergency medical services — still doesn’t cover the district’s annual cost for the ambulance, which is upwards of $750,000, but it’s just enough to make it feasible, said Chief Armando Muela.
While Woodside’s ambulance has been a money-losing proposition from day one, district officials reasoned that the benefits of faster service for its rural population and the hands-on experience gained by its paramedics made it worthwhile. However, increased costs have severely outpaced the rate of reimbursement, and earlier this year Woodside fire’s board of directors warned that the district could not continue to spend more than a half-million dollars a year to subsidize the ambulance service.
Exactly why there are problems funding ambulance service is complicated. An existing agreement essentially grants a private company, American Medical Response (AMR), a monopoly on county-wide ambulance service until 2009.
The Woodside district ambulance operates as a subcontractor to AMR, and receives its funding not from patient billing, but through the Joint Powers Authority, a government agency representing fire districts in San Mateo County. The convoluted arrangement means that the Woodside district doesn’t know exactly how much money the ambulance brings in. However, district officials estimate that patient billing brings in far more than its current annual reimbursement of $177,000.
“The value of our ambulance is worth more than what we’re being paid,” Chief Muela said.
And now, they have some numbers to prove it. AMR estimated that it would cost $689,000 a year to replace Woodside’s ambulance with one of its own. After prolonged lobbying, the JPA members voted to increase Woodside’s ambulance funding.
Woodside fire district is the last fire agency in San Mateo County that runs its own ambulance, staffed by firefighter/paramedics. Menlo Park, Half Moon Bay and Pacifica all dropped out after facing similar funding problems. However, the fire agencies aren’t allowed to just opt out. Menlo Park, Pacifica and Half Moon Bay have to pay for the privilege of getting out of their ambulance contracts, to make up for AMR’s increased costs. If Woodside dropped its ambulance, it would have had to do the same.
So, JPA officials figured out how much it would cost for the Woodside fire district to drop out, and agreed to give a portion of that money to Woodside to continue its ambulance service, rather than pay AMR to take over, Chief Muela said.
Now, he said, Woodside fire officials are focusing on the creation of the next multiyear ambulance service contract for the county, and are working to make sure district gets a better deal so it can afford to keep its ambulance beyond 2009.
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