Supplemental ambulance services in Detroit are up in the air as the city’s firefighter union and some council members press the administration to create a pathway for all runs to be handled in-house.
After a lengthy debate, the council voted 4-3 Tuesday to send a set of three-year contracts to augment ambulance coverage – collectively valued at about $5 million – back to a council committee for further review.
“I am uncomfortable with these contracts. The city has its own ambulance department, and then we have all these multi-million dollar contracts on standby,” Council Member Angela Whitfield-Calloway told colleagues. “I won’t be supporting this at all. I believe we need to build from within.”
Detroit Fire Department Second Deputy Commissioner Derek Hillman joined the meeting virtually, along with the fire department’s chief of staff and the city’s head of procurement to address questions and concerns, telling council members that the contracts are “critical” and “pretty standard” to help DFD with peak call times.
Jeffrey Pegg, vice president of the Detroit Fire Fire Association, attended Tuesday’s meeting with other fire union officials to oppose the contracts.
“We believe that we can provide a better service to the citizens and the people that visit the city by using our own members to build this fire department,” said Pegg of the union that represents about 1,200 men and women in Local 344.
Detroit launched a mandatory Medical First Responder program in 2014. Before then, Detroit was one of the only major fire departments in the country without cross-trained firefighters.
“With the private ambulances, we don’t believe that it offers the same type of service,” he added. “We want our members to do the work.”
Pegg said the supplemental contracts are “not a fix” and that the administration has known the union’s position for years and hasn’t prioritized a plan to bolster staffing or procure more equipment.
“The idea is to hire more (firefighters), and they (the administration) haven’t done it,” he said.
The fire department has 26 EMS rigs of its own in operation daily. Hillman said that the supplemental ambulances are used in shifts and four of them are operating 24 hours per day. Hillman said if the contracts aren’t approved response times will be affected.
He couldn’t give an exact figure Tuesday on how much wait times could go up, but said that an impact would be felt “across the board” for the city’s most urgent 911 medical emergency calls. The current response time for Code 1 medical runs is under 7 minutes and 30 seconds, according to DFD.
Detroit Procurement Director Sandra Stahl said the contracts for support services have been in place for the past two years and have “greatly assisted in improving response times.”
The latest three-year contracts with Hart EMS, AmeriPro EMS and Superior Air-Ground Ambulance Service, Inc., factor in lower hourly rates for service. Representatives for the companies could not be immediately reached Tuesday.
Gerald Stewart, secretary of the DFFA, said union officials were told in the past that supplemental coverage would be necessary to get through staffing shortages in the summer months. But the agreements with the outside companies have gone on for too long, he said, and DFFA is calling for a “phase out.”
Hillman, the deputy fire commissioner, said the three ambulance vendors absorb about 25% of the department’s overall call volume and about 50,000 medical calls per year.
“This is going to put a large increase of taxation on our current members of responding to those calls after these contracts expire,” he said.
The existing contracts for supplemental emergency ambulance coverage expire at midnight on May 1.
After Tuesday’s meeting, DFD told BridgeDetroit in a statement that “we are currently working towards a resolution to this emergency situation,” and it “will not leave Detroiters with a gap in this critical coverage.”
Elisa Malile, chief of staff to the fire department, told council members Tuesday that the administration and fire union are aligned on the concept of having all of Detroit’s EMS services provided in-house.
“I don’t think there’s a dispute on that. We’re not debating whether we want it in-house,” said Malile, who stressed, however, that the process would need a multi-year ramp-up to arrange funding, acquire proper equipment and hire more than 100 firefighters and conduct training, among other things.
“We’re addressing the direct needs for the city and residents who live here,” she said. “Unfortunately, this is what this looks like until we have a pathway to ramp this up over the next few years to get what we need to be successful.”
With the supplemental contracts, the city has about 40 ambulances out per day, she said, adding “we need them to continue our (existing) service to the residents.”
Whitfield-Calloway said she will vote against the contracts and was prepared to do so on Tuesday. The city, she said, is telling the fire department to grow from within, and then we “turn around and slap them in the face by bringing outsiders into the city.”
“I have full confidence in our fire department,” she said. “We don’t need three ambulance companies on standby for anything.”
District 5 Council Member Renata Miller agreed with Whitfield-Calloway. The two, along with At-large Member Mary Waters, voted against sending the contracts back to committee and signaled they preferred an outright vote against the agreements.
“Why a three-year contract? If we’re trying not to have this contract, why are we going another three years?” Whitfield-Calloway said.
She noted that last year, the council voted in favor of a one-year contract extension and suggested that the administration propose a similar agreement instead, as did Miller.
“If we gave a one-year extension last year, we can do that as opposed to three years,” said Miller, arguing that the union has been talking about the problem with in-house services for years, and “you’re just dismissing them.”
“You’re not working on it. You’re just bypassing time,” she said.
While DFD administration touts 42 ambulances, the department only has 26, Stewart pointed out Tuesday, and said that the private companies account for about 14 more in the total the administration cited.
Miller asked for clarity from the administration about the disparity in figures.
“What is the honest answer?” she asked.
Hillman agreed that DFD operates 26 ambulances per day and that the contracts with the three vendors brought that figure up to just above 40 per day on 12-hour shifts.
Council Members Denzel McCampbell, Scott Benson, Pro Tem Coleman A. Young and Latisha Johnson all voted in favor of delaying the contracts, but also expressed collective concern, including over what would happen if the agreements are ultimately canceled without an alternative plan.
“At the end of the day, we still have to make sure folks have the EMT services they need when they call for help,” McCampbell said.
Stahl noted Tuesday that about 86 Detroit residents are employed across the three vendors. New EMS purchases are close to $300,000 apiece and the time needed to build them is lengthy, she said.
“The equipment side would take some significant investment and time that would need to be planned for,” she said.
Stewart said if it takes time to build an ambulance, the city should have gotten started on the process years ago. If the city can find different rigs that are suitable and can get them to Detroit faster and cheaper, “we’re on board with that,” he said.
Hillman told the council Tuesday that the department would have to add another 18 ambulances and about 120 people to provide the same level of coverage it has today with the three contracts.
Malile said if the contracts aren’t approved, response times are going to go up significantly.
“You will definitely see that go into effect immediately,” she told council members.
