Collierville weighs ambulance contract

Chief Crawford expects better service

Now that Collierville won’t be under the umbrella of the county’s ambulance service, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen is expected to vote Monday night on a contract with Rural/Metro Corp.

The town’s proposed contract will be $36,000 less per year than what Collierville is paying now to Shelby County.

The prorated annual fee is $422,400 compared to this year’s prorated annual fee of almost $456,000. During 2012, Collierville had 1,905 emergency calls in which a patient was taken to a hospital.

The five-year contract, with an additional year extension, calls for two full-time ambu- lances in Collierville and a nineminute response time at least 90 percent of the time for roughly 36-square miles of coverage area. In addition, Rural/Metro will provide up to three more ambulances as needed.

“We feel like we will have as good or better ambulance service than what we would have had in the past,” said Collierville Fire Chief Jerry Crawford. “They will remain in Collierville and won’t be used elsewhere. They have assured us we will not run out of ambulances.”

While a firetruck with a paramedic and two emergency medical technicians may reach a patient within an average of four minutes and 34 seconds, Crawford said an ambulance often ar- rives at the same time.

In the event of a tornado or other event with massive casualties, Crawford said, Rural/Metro has indicated they could have 64 ambulances to help within 12 hours. Rural/Metro has contracts in 90 locations in 21 states.

If approved, the contract goes into effect July 1.

Under the previous intergovernmental arrangement with

Shelby County, Collierville’s share was $455,893 of the almost $3.1 million contract.

Collierville’s contract will be performance-based and is similar to what the county had with Rural/ Metro.

The county’s previous contract guaranteed that there would be 14 fulltime ambulances. The new county contract is more of an “as needed” system and called for six full-time ambulances and up to 10 parttime ambulances for peak times.

The town’s staff report said the county’s new system, “uses a computer model to attempt to predict the optimal times to have ambulances in service and available for the next cluster of calls.”

“It’s a system we are not used to,” Crawford said. “I have never seen that type of system work. I don’t want to take a chance that those ambulances might not be available.”

By having a contract directly with Rural/Metro, Crawford said it will eliminate the extra calls when dispatching an ambulance. Now, if someone calls 911 and seeks medical help, the Collierville dispatcher has to call the Shelby County 911 dispatcher to get an ambulance to the location.

The annual cost will be $ 422,400 for the first two years of the contract. In the remaining three years, a 2 percent increase is built into the proposal.

“I think their service is very good. We have a long relationship with Rural/ Metro,” said Mayor Stan Joyner. “They have been very responsive to Collierville’s needs.”

Rural/ Metro already has offices in Collierville. “There are ambulances inside our city limits every day,” Joyner said. “The equipment is here. It’s just a matter of them staffing the equipment.”