The Sandy Springs Fire Department got permission to buy a $390,046 medical response unit vehicle as part of its plan to fill in potential gaps in ambulance service.
The purchase comes as the city mulls dropping a subsidy to provider American Ambulance Response (AMR) for quicker response times.
Fire Chief Keith Sanders told the Sandy Springs City Council the city has paid a $260,000 per year subsidy in addition to its base contract for ambulance service to guarantee response times of eight minutes or less.
The agreement with AMR ends June 30, and Sanders said the company wants an 850 percent increase in the subsidy if the city signs a new contract.
“In looking at our data, looking at our response times currently, we put a fire truck on all EMS calls that are critical emergency EMS calls with a paramedic within those 8 minutes,” Sanders said. “Ninety percent of the time we have all of the intervention, all of the drugs that we need to stabilize that patient.”
Because of these factors, Sanders said paying extra for the quicker AMR response isn’t necessary. If a patient needed to be transported before an ambulance arrived, the new medical response unit would be capable of taking the person to the hospital.
Once the new vehicle is delivered, who will staff it is still in question. The fire chief said he’s waiting on an insurance rating report to find out if the fire department can take one of its ladder trucks out of service and use its crews to man the medical response unit. If retiring the ladder truck endangers the city’s insurance rating, then he anticipates returning to city council to ask for more firefighters to operate the new vehicle.
The staffing decision isn’t needed immediately as Sanders said once ordered it would take 12 to 14 months for the manufacturer to build the medical response unit and deliver it to the city.
