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City, County Nearing Agreement Over Non-Emergency Ambulance Services

Sedgwickcounty.org

Wichita City Council members and Sedgwick County Commissioners voted Wednesday to give themselves more time to work on an agreement over ambulance services.

The often-tense joint meeting was held just days before a July 1 deadline to withdraw from an agreement under which Sedgwick County provides ambulance service to Wichita. The current arrangement runs through the end of 2017, but the city has the option of either pulling out from the agreement, or allowing it to stand for another year.

Holding up discussions has been the issue of non-emergency response times: Sedgwick County has set a goal to respond to 100 percent of non-emergency calls within an hour, though the industry standard is 98 percent.

The city wants the option of sending a private 3rd-party ambulance service if the response time would be more than an hour.

“It’s more for people having a choice in a non-emergency situation," said Councilman James Clendenin. "You guys have amazing service, nobody's gonna dispute that. I just would love to have people to have choice."

Some commissioners didn’t like the idea of outsourcing service, particularly to a for-profit company.

“With the 3rd-party vendor, elected officials are taken out of accountability," said Commissioner David Dennis. "Because of these points, we're hesitant to jeopardize the safety in our community."

But Commissioner Richard Ranzau, noting he was likely in the minority on the commission, said he believed using in a 3rd-party service could free up the county's EMS for more emergency response calls.

The county agreed to compile a list of ambulance services for EMS responders to refer to if needed. The council and commission voted--with Clendenin casting the sole "no" vote--to push back the renewal deadline to Aug. 1 in order to work out final details.

The council and commission will each vote on the amended contract at their own meetings.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.