Ambulance provider Rural/Metro leaving county
BY FRANKLIN HAYES Gulf Breeze News franklin@gulfbreezenews.com

The Rural/Metro Ambulance Service Corporation is on its way out of Santa Rosa County but not for at least another six months. The ambulance service provider opted not to rebid during the county's most recent Request For Proposals (RFP). County commissioners decided Thursday, March 22 to extend the company's contract for county-wide ambulance service until September 30 in order to give county staff more time to evaluate bids for ambulance service .

The county is currently accepting bids to replace Rural/Metro's contract and the bidding ends April 3. Rural/Metro served as Santa Rosa's only ambulance provider for the last 11 years .

"If it was a feasible option we would have bid," said Rural/Metro's Operational Manager Kenneth Daughtery.

Daughtery, who has worked in emergency medical response in Santa Rosa County for over 20 years, said there were three major reasons why Rural/Metro decided not to bid on the contract. The new contract would require ambulance providers to:

· Cut their response times by 25 percent.

· Respond even faster in a larger urban area.

· Replace their ambulances every 350,000 miles or every four years.

"It's truly a mixture of all of it that makes it economically unfeasible," Daughtery said. "If it was cost effective to have an ambulance on every call in two minutes, we'd already do it. In larger markets like New York or Chicago they have the number of calls to warrant an ambulance on every fourth street corner."

Daughtery also said Escambia County Commissioners decided to take over ambulance operation previously conducted by Rural/Metro on Pensacola Beach at the end of March.

"They have been talking about taking the beach back for sometime," Daughtery said, adding that the loss would cost Rural/Metro approximately $65,000 in subsidy per year from Escambia County.

Despite their loss in Escambia, Daughtery was pleased with the extension in Santa Rosa County.

"It's fine by us," Daughtery said when asked about the extension. "Our contract expires May 15 and a new provider would not take effect until October 1. The county's got to have ambulance service and we told them we were willing to work with them."

One major reason the Santa Rosa County Commission decided to renew the agreement recently was a hefty $29,166 charge per month if they did not, Daughtery said.

"They'd basically be paying us not to be here," Daughtery said.

The manager explained that his company would receive $350,000 up front this year to pay for worker's compensation and other insurance expenses in 2007 and 2008. That funding typically runs from June 1 to May 31 of the next year.

"Our insurance costs are the same for operation regardless if we serve one day or 365 days in the next fiscal year," Rural/Metro Group President Bryan Gibson wrote in a letter to commissioners. "Obviously, any period during which we are not the provider creates an insurance cost that we cannot recover."

County government officials may employ Rural/Metro on a month-to-month basis after September. The contract had already been extended for one year and was set to expire in May 2007.

"We've still got the option of coming back to Rural/Metro and extending it further," said County Commission Chairman Tom Stewart. "Every time we extend it, it saves us money."