Multnomah County approves review of its ambulance service plan

Now to an update on Multnomah County’s ambulance response problems today, commissioners approved an assessment of the ambulance service plan. What’s that mean? It’s essentially a way to take a slower careful approach and evaluate the system before making any changes. You may ask why has this step taken this long? We’ve reported on these problems for more than a year now. And county leaders have been well aware, Commissioner Julia Brim Edwards had a similar thought and while she supported this action today, she said she feels it’s not enough as ambulance response times are poor and people are

in jeopardy. Firefighters across the cities and family members of those who’ve suffered from delayed response times have been raising this issue for more than a year. Um So ha having a vote just on a an assessment of the ambulance service plan is inadequate if, if it’s not changing the staffing model, what are the other things? Knowing it’s a very complex thing. What are the other things we can do to make short term improvements in our ambulance response times? Um Because again, I’m not an expert and we can argue about whether what the staffing model is

but I don’t think waiting another year to improve the response time is responsible. Now, the timeline here is not definitive. Brem Edwards mentioned waiting a year just then county

ems leaders say this review should probably take about nine months, but this probably isn’t the only thing the board of commissioners will try to do related to ambulance response. There is talk of working on this issue next month with a need for more action in the immediate future, but the board did not support Commissioner Sharon Myron’s efforts today to make an immediate temporary switch to a new

staffing model of one paramedic and one EMT that we’ve discussed at length here on the story. Meanwhile, a former paramedic and two current AM R paramedics spoke to commissioners about why they support keeping the two paramedic model. Tim moleman was one of them. We talked to him in April of last year and he explained why he believes am R is the problem here. It is time for change. Our ems professionals de deserve better. Our community deserves better. Allocating these funds is the first step in creating an EMS system that serves the people, not only the

profit margin on the surface, removing the two paramedic requirements, sounds like a quick logical fix to the current paramedic shortage. This only treats the symptoms and not the underlying disease ems systems across the nation are failing. We keep hearing about the national paramedic shortage. AM R is a National company, their treatment of ems providers has created this crisis. Ems providers are no longer willing to be accomplices in such broken systems.