Travis County EMS Consultant Report

 Travis County EMS Consultant Report

 For those interested, the following link will provide a copy of Travis County's EMS Consultant Report on Existing Ambulance ("EMS") Services and Options to Improve.  The report is a 145 page PDF file.  

Overall, the study offers a balanced assessment of the current problems Travis County has in its inter-local agreement with the City of Austin for ambulance services and medical direction. Two disappointments: it lacks depth in financial modeling which I think is essential in driving home key points and is missing an analysis on the productivity and effectiveness of the City's  "EMS Office of the Medical Director".  Regardless, the report does a decent job laying out the issues, for example:

• Within the past 5 years costs have sky-rocketed 48%, but ambulance response time continues to average an abysmal 18 minutes and the city ambulance service ("EMS") only solution for their poor performance is for the County to contract for more ambulances at a whopping $1.8 million per ambulance.  
• The City continues to resist financial transparency or accountability and Travis County has no contractual control over the services it receives or its costs.  
• The ambulance union and its crony medical director (whose budget is one of the highest in the nation, approaching $1.0 million dollars annually)  fights to keep county fire departments from putting their own paramedics on fire trucks even though it would dramatically improve response time, improve patient care and costs 1/18th the price of an ambulance (for one ambulance you could outfit 18 fire trucks with paramedics, that's a lot better coverage for county residents and a far better deal for taxpayers). 

There are also a few noteworthy  kudos for the City regarding the clinical care the ambulance medics provide (when they finally get on the scene), improvements in bill collection and revenues and improvement in City ambulance response time.   The report also highlights other "EMS systems" to give some comparative perspective and provides a series of options for improving existing services.   

The one option the MAG Consultants prefer and recommend: 

Consolidating all County fire departments (ESD's)  into single county funded fire department and adding EMS services and a dedicated County EMS Medical Director along with merging County Emergency Management, Fire Marshal Services and STARFLIGHT Air Rescue operations into the same operational entity.  

Worth a read.

I'll offer more comments on why I believe its time to  merge county fire departments into one county-wide operation and my preferences on how Travis County should improve its emergency ambulance services in my next post.

Here's the link for your own PDF copy of the EMS Consultant Report:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17565395/PUBLIC%20SHARED%20FIlES/MAG%20EMS%20Report%20for%20Travis%20County%2011%204%2011-1.pdf