GFFR offers new ambulance transport contact to GFES
City Commissioners told Great Falls Fire Rescue officials that they were comfortable moving forward offering a new ambulance transport performance contract to Great Falls Emergency Services.
GFFR officials again reviewed contract details with commissions during their Nov. 21 meeting.
After the discussion, Mayor Bob Kelly asked GFFR Chief Jeremy Jones what he needed from commissioners.
Jones said staff was looking for consensus on their proposal so he could provide a recommendation.
Kelly asked what he was making a recommendation for.
Jones said they’d make recommendations on the next steps, to either offer a contract or issue a request for proposals.
Commissioners Joe McKenney asked what would happen if GFES didn’t respond to a contract offer.
Jones said then the city would release an RFP.
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In recent months, there’s been some discussion essentially asked GFFR officials to negotiate a contract with GFES, to which Jones said during the Nov. 21 meeting that “we never negotiate performance contracts or what our expectations are.”
Jones said they took input from GFES, but would not negotiate a performance contract since the city’s obligation is to provide quality emergency medical response to the community. Staff did make some modifications that GFES requested.
Commissioners said they were comfortable offering the contract to GFES.
Jones said he made the offer on Nov. 22 and on Nov. 29, he said that GFES had accepted the contract as written and it will be on a commission agenda for final approval in the near future.
The current contract expires in May and GFFR officials have spent the last few months updating the city’s EMS code and educating commissioners on details of the performance contract to ensure high quality EMS responses within the city.
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In October, commissioners approved updates to Title 8, Chapter 5 of city code, which pertains to emergency medical services and makes the city responsible for the EMS system, including fire, medical, hazmat and more.
GFFR Chief Jeremy Jones said it’s an all hazardous force and the code makes the city, specifically GFFR, responsible.
The only area they contract out is ambulance transportation, since they don’t have enough staffing or vehicles to take that on entirely. GFFR does have some ambulances and will provide transport when necessary.
In 1994, GFFR began responding to all emergency medical calls and commissioners formally established the city’s EMS system in 2007, according to GFFR’s annual report.
City code establishes the provisions used to develop an ambulance performance contract.
City considering changes to emergency medical code
At the time, there were multiple ambulance companies in town and there were issues getting the appropriate resources to an emergency in a timely fashion, according to GFFR officials. That lead the city to establishing the EMS system that currently exists.
The code changes are separate from the performance contract itself.
GFFR recommended a shorter contract term as their position is that shorter terms would garner higher performance, but GFES argued that shorter terms brought instability and hindered their plan for facility expansion.
Justin Grohs, GFES manager, told commissioners that EMS is a volatile environment and they preferred the stability of a longer term.
GFES suggested changing language in the contract about when the city would provide ambulance transport to lower level calls if nothing else was available after 10 minutes.
GFFR stopped responding to Code 1, or minor calls, in 2021 due to call volume and lack of resources.
But, Jones said, when no other ambulances are available in the city, GFFR responds to minor calls.
“We do not let those calls hang, especially for an extended period of time,” Jones told commissioners. He said that the city could not in good faith let hold even non-emergent calls for 10 minutes and then wait more time for an EMS response.
Jones said that the language in the contract is “really what we’ve been doing in our system today.”
Jones told commissioners that some of the changes are updating the contract language to what’s in existence today since some of the verbiage was leftover boiler plate language from when the code and contract were first established in 2008.
GFFR conducting high rise training
There was some discussion over proposed language from GFES to require the commission to be involved in a major breach of contract or a takeover of ambulance transport by GFFR.
Jones said there is language in the contract for major breaches, which the city has used in the past, and that in any situation that rises to a major breach, the commission would be aware.
GFES suggested requiring the commission to determine a breach or takeover is needed after consulting with independent professionals.
Jones said that was “putting read tape within there to do what’s best for the community.”
He said that GFES has been the city’s ambulance transport contractor since the beginning and never gone down the road of a takeover and would only do so due to a major health or safety incident occurring, which would need an immediate response, rather than convening the commission and finding independent consultants.
Jones said that if there was a major breach of contract situation, there are steps to address it in the contract and GFFR would update commissioners on any such situation.
City amends ambulance transport agreement [2022]
He said that GFFR has largely addressed their concerns by updating the EMS ordinance and revising the performance contract.
Asked what would require a takeover of the ambulance transport for the city, Jones said the only instance he could imagine under the new code and proposed contract was if GFES notified the city they were closing operations.
Commissioner Rick Tryon said that sounded like adding a lot of time into what could be an emergency situation and “we don’t want that.”
Jones said, as the system administrator, no, that’s not what the city wanted in the contract.
Commissioner Susan Wolff said that she was really concerned about the upcoming Sentinel missile project and the potential community impact so she was worried about the length of the contract.
She asked what they could do if issues arose.
City staff said there are provisions in the contract for amendments if needed.
Jones said they monitor ambulance transports and provide monthly reports.
Commissioner Joe McKenney said that he was worried about the length of the contract in case the city needed to attract a new contractor and their startup investment.
Jones said that the ultimate responsibility for EMS falls on the city to ensure the highest performance.
