The Owensboro-Daviess County Ambulance Contracting Authority had a first check-in with American Medical Response at a meeting Wednesday evening.
The ACA, a six-member board with representatives from the city and county, is responsible for overseeing ambulance contracts and ensuring AMR provides its board-mandated services to the community.
Daviess County Fire Chief Jeremy Smith, who was appointed chair of the board during the meeting, said one for the concerns that affect his department is EMS’s response time during peak hours.
“One of the concerns we’ve had on our side is the frequency of us getting called into the city,” Smith said. “I know runs have increased.”
Smith said from Jan. 1 to March 11, DCFD has been dispatched 13 times to the city, which makes the department on track to receiving triple the number of calls.
Smith said the system will be inundated if there aren’t enough medics to make the runs during peak hours.
“At that point, they’ll have to reach out to us and we would have our medics respond to assist them and have a medic on the scene,” Smith said. “So that’s a concern for us, you know, just because it ties up my medics inside the city.”
Stephanie Rutter, AMR regional director, said there are eight full-time medic positions currently open and getting these filled will help resolve this issue.
She said AMR has also looked at re-scheduling their medics and is working on recruiting and retention.
“So we do have a plan in place as far as a timeline,” Rutter said, adding that there is a medic shortage across the nation. “Our plan is to make sure that we… (build) the business unit here up to par and a place where people want to work.”
Rutter said in Kentucky and locally, the industry is struggling to find medics.
AMR has been contracted since the summer of 2019 after Yellow Ambulance of Owensboro-Daviess County declined to renew its contract.
The next meeting is on June 10 at 3 p.m.
