Stillwater Medical Center started a non-emergency transfer service that transports patients to and from the hospital, but firefighters aren’t satisfied.
One additional ambulance was set up to reduce the Stillwater Fire Department’s workload and to make more ambulances available for emergency calls.
However, the City Commission did not negotiate the change with the fire union, which violated the contract between the city and the fire union, said Lt. Tom Oosting, International Association of Fire Fighters secretary.
Oosting said the fire union followed the grievance procedure written in its agreement with the city of Stillwater and is now in the final step; arbitration. A neutral arbitrator will be selected from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
The arbitration hearing will be open to the public Dec. 1 at 10 a.m. at City Hall.
SMC is using Life EMS, a private
contractor based in Enid, to run an ambulance service that transfers non-emergency patients weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. These patients might need to travel between SMC and another hospital, nursing home or residence.
“It was creating a real concern that we may not be fully-staffed for emergency situations,” City Manager Dan Galloway said. “We feel our first and primary obligation and duty to the community is to provide for emergencies, fires, accidents and emergency situations.”
The SMC/Life EMS service is estimated to cover 300 calls per year. The Stillwater Fire Department receives about 5,600 calls per year; three-quarters of them are emergency, Oosting said. This leaves 1,100 non-emergency calls for the fire department to respond to.
“It doesn’t really reduce our workload that much, but it does make more ambulances available for emergency calls,” he said.
One Life EMS ambulance is stationed at SMC with a level-two emergency medical technician and a paramedic, a level-three EMT; the highest qualification. The Fire Department staffs its ambulances this way so the quality of service should be equal to that of the Fire Department’s ambulance service.
“We don’t want to give up quality, we don’t want to give up service, we just want to find a way to make it more affordable,” Galloway said.
The service began Sept. 29 and SMC has from 60- to 90- days to decide whether to continue its service. It will make its decision in December.
Galloway asked the SMC board of trustees if it was interested in providing the service in December 2007. The board voted unanimously to establish a service Jan. 23, 2008.
“It helps facilitate our patient base to leave the hospital and go back to where they live or to rehab,” SMC board of trustees member David Pitts said.
Over the past two or three years, SMC has found it increasing more difficult to transfer patients to OKC or Tulsa in a timely manner, SMC Vice President Mark Galliart said. SMC had to rely on surrounding communities such as Oologah, Hennessey and Enid to take non-emergency patients to their destination should the Stillwater Fire Department ambulance service be busy.
“Instead of now us having to wait a couple of hours to get an ambulance from out of town, we can go immediately, and that’s just best for the patients and the citizens of the community,” Galliart said. “(Life EMS) are doing a great job in helping us take our non-emergency transfers. It’s been going really well.”
Although the service will help SMC during the day, after 5 p.m. and during the weekend they will go back to relying on the fire department or another ambulance service in the area.
Jerry Moeller, SMC president and CEO, said one child with spina bifida who had seized had to wait an hour and 40 minutes for an ambulance from Hennessey to arrive, according to his report in the SMC board of trustees meeting Sept. 24. Moeller has asked Galloway about “urgent” transfers and Galloway said he is researching into how the city can help.
“At least during the day we will have a much faster response time getting patients from our hospital to OKC or Tulsa, or our hospital to nursing homes and it will relieve some of the burden on the fire department who can keep their people in the their station,” Moeller said.
The firefighters union is not happy that the city commission did not negotiate the commencement of the SMC ambulance service, Oosting said.
“That’s all part of the job what we do here at the fire department and any changes in what we do have to be negotiated, and they didn’t negotiate that change,” Oosting said. “They (the city commission) tried to, and then they went ahead and did it anyway, and you can’t do that under a contract. You haven’t come back with anything, so come back with something; we’ll see if we can make it work.”
Mayor Roger McMillian asked a citizens task force to look into the city of Stillwater fire and ambulance staffing; the non-emergency transfer service was part of this report. The task force focused on “how to maximize quality fire and ambulance service to the citizens of Stillwater in the most economically viable and sustainable manner,” task force-chair Melissa DeLacerda said in the cover-letter to mayor McMillian.
Section VI of the report addressed non-emergency transfers:
“The City of Stillwater personnel should be in the public safety/emergency business and not in the non-emergency medical transport business.”
The task force concluded that the fire department “divest itself of the non-emergency medical transport service.”
The fire union is working on a rebuttal against the task force that will be presented at a city commission meeting with a public hearing, Oosting said.
“That’s not what we need to do; we need more people,” Oosting said. “That’s what all this came from; we’ve been fighting for more people for about four years now. The task force report was written by people who have no knowledge of the fire service and no knowledge of the fire department.”
The fire department’s political action committee will suggest the hiring of nine additional workers that will help cover an ambulance for non-emergency calls from the fire station headquarters.
“I understand it’s a problem for the hospital, but we can’t take an ambulance out of town on a transfer incase we need one here for an emergency,” Oosting said.
With the money used to pay Life EMS, Oosting said SMC could help pay for more employees in the fire department.
Money to help the fire department can be found in a variety of places, Oosting said.
“If the university would kick in a little bit of money, if the hospital would kick in a little bit of money, things like that, the money would be there. (The city commission) don’t seem to care, they don’t want to do that, they don’t want to find an answer, they want to take all the stuff away; and that’s not what’s best for the citizens,” Oosting said.
Galloway said he had no complaints about the quality of the fire department’s ambulance service. However, he said he was convinced that any group of good, well-managed, qualified employees can operate an equally quality ambulance service.
“It’s a complicated issue,” Galloway said. “I think I’m responsible to work with the citizens to provide the best emergency public safety services for police and fire. Also, I may or may not be responsible for ambulance; that’s a political decision. But if we provide ambulance service, I feel we need to provide it in the most cost effective way.”
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