City Ambulances Will Transport Patients Under New Costa Mesa System

April 21--The Costa Mesa Fire & Rescue Department will assume providing all ambulance transportation services in the city under a new model approved this week.

City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday to give their blessing to a system in which the department will contract with private firms to provide staffing in some city ambulances and handle billing for transportation services.

That strategy, Fire Chief Dan Stefano said, is "grounded in the effort to provide the most effective and efficient service to the community."

Under the new model -- which the department hopes to have in place by January -- patients would be taken to hospitals in city ambulances.

Currently, patients are transported in private ambulances operated by Care Ambulance Service, a city contractor since 2008.

As it stands now, a firetruck responds to emergency calls along with ambulances from both the city and Care Ambulance.

For patients in more critical condition, city paramedics travel in a Care ambulance for the hospital trip, with a city ambulance following so the paramedics have a ride back.

Critics have long called that setup inefficient and costly -- especially since the city's ambulance fleet, purchased a few years ago, has not been used for patient transport.

In addition to making better use of Costa Mesa's ambulances, fire officials said the new model is expected to bring in more revenue from ambulance fees paid by patients and insurance companies, boosting the city's annual ambulance cost recovery from the current $709,907 to just under $2 million.

It also will enable the department to be more flexible and "adapt to the evolving EMS [emergency medical service] landscape," Stefano said in an interview Friday.

Councilman Jim Righeimer, who last year voted against changing the transport model, praised Stefano on Tuesday for doing "a phenomenal job of taking the best pieces" of different ideas discussed over the years and uniting them under one concept.

Mayor Katrina Foley said she looks at the model approved Tuesday as a "phasing" and that her preference would be "having our own ambulance service with our own employees."

"I think we would generate more cost recovery from that," she said. "It would be a better program. But I also am looking realistically at the fact that we don't have sufficient staffing to accomplish that at this time and we need to phase things in."

luke.money@latimes.com

Twitter @LukeMMoney

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