OFFICIALS MULL ADDING MEDICS TO FIRE CREWS.

Byline: Sonia Giordani Daily News Staff Writer

For nearly a decade, Ventura County firefighters have been battling more than blazes in a fiery turf war over paramedic services.

Locking horns with the three private ambulance companies in the county, fire officials repeatedly have proposed training their own paramedics and putting them on their own fire trucks.

At one point, they even considered buying their own ambulance vans to displace the private companies.

Now the two groups finally appear to be locking arms.

Under a proposal announced by Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper last week, the private ambulance companies' contracts would remain safe, giving them the exclusive right to transport heart patients and other victims to area hospitals.

But to improve paramedic response times, which can reach 20 minutes in some of the more remote regions of the county, some firefighters would be trained as medics authorized to treat emergency victims before the ambulance arrives.

``The initial evaluation of this program is that the public will receive a more consistent level of (emergency medical service) throughout the county at no increased cost to the taxpayers,'' Roper said in a memo released to county supervisors and city managers this week.

Fire officials will be meeting with ambulance service providers, regulatory agencies and labor groups in the coming months to draft a formal proposal expected to return to the county Board of Supervisors early next year.

So far, it's a plan even the private ambulance companies say they support.

``We still have a lot of things to talk about, but we're very optimistic. I think the important thing is that we will go slow and do this right,'' said Brian Ranger, operations manager with American Medical Response, which is the largest private ambulance company in the county and covers all areas except parts of Oxnard and Ojai.

Moving toward partnership

With more people and more homes moving into even the more remote regions of the county over the years, fire officials and ambulance companies faced the challenge of meeting increasing emergency needs with dwindling funds coming from Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

When Ventura County supervisors approved new contracts with the ambulance companies two years ago, it required ambulances to respond within 10 minutes to at least 90 percent of their calls - which they have succeeded in doing.

But with the Fire Department's 33 fire companies dispersed across the county, Ventura County firefighters say they often arrive at the scene of an emergency before a paramedic and ambulance. The response time for most calls remains between three and five minutes.

``We're not knocking the private companies' services. We're just saying that in some cases we can get there first,'' said Carroll Hoiness, Simi Valley fire engineer and president of the Ventura County Professional Firefighters Union, which has pushed to have firefighters trained as medics.

Under the existing policy, even firefighters with paramedic training can only administer first aid and try to stabilize heart patients. Only paramedics with the private ambulance companies under county contracts can administer more advanced medical treatment.

``We have a lot of ex-paramedics who are now firefighters. So it wouldn't be difficult to re-train them. The thing now is that's not even an option,'' Hoiness said.

The union has supported past proposals to put medics on county fire engines - and to give such qualified firefighters higher salaries and better benefits. They also supported a plan to bring county ambulances online.

But such proposals, which threatened to put the private ambulance companies out of business, all failed. Ultimately, even the Board of Supervisors voiced concerns about how county fire could afford to shoulder the additional cost when the department suffered a prolonged budget crisis.

``What was presented in the past were controversial plans where the Fire Department essentially would have displaced the private ambulance companies by actually transporting the victims and submitting the bills and collecting some revenue,'' Roper said.

The chief said the most recent proposal is nothing like past plans.

``Now we are looking at a way to do it so it would be noncompetitive. We're looking at this as a public-private partnership,'' he said.

Working out details

Roper said the most recent proposal largely grew out of the recent success the city of Ventura Fire Department has had with a cooperative paramedic agreement with American Medical Response.

Although all ambulance services are provided by the private ambulance company, paramedics on the city fire engines have helped cut emergency response times.

Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Judy Mikels has indicated she is interested in looking into the new county proposal.

``Obviously, Judy supports an increased level of service to the public, but there is the question of how much this is actually going to cost the taxpayer,'' said Keith Jajko, a spokesman with Mikels' office.

Roper said the details of how such a plan would be financed still have to be explored. But initial discussions have shown that the proposal could be funded without tapping Fire District property tax dollars.

Instead, the program funding could be derived from ``pass-through'' dollars and by exchanging services provided by partnering ambulance providers. For instance, ambulance providers could provide ongoing training to firefighters to maintain paramedic certification.

Ranger, the operations manager with AMR, said the plan would also help the private agencies cut costs in a time when federal and state agencies are cutting their funding - refusing to pay for some emergency calls they say don't require ambulance transport to the hospital and reimbursing less than half of other transportation bills.

``Our goal in trying to work cooperatively with county fire is to get medical service to the patient's side faster,'' he said.