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Multnomah County Auditor Jennifer McGuirk has launched an investigation into the county’s contract with its ambulance provider, American Medical Response, citing public complaints and WW’s report last month that the county had declined to fine the company despite its poor performance.
AMR has been failing to meet on-time performance standards for over a year, blaming an industrywide shortage of paramedics.
McGuirk asked County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson whether the county knew, prior to WW’s report, of a highly publicized hit-and-run in which the victim died shortly after an ambulance arrived late. Vega Pederson said the county indeed knew. Yet it hasn’t fined AMR. The county’s contract with AMR runs until 2028.
At the direction of the auditor, County Ombudsperson Cheryl Taylor told the chair in an email last week that she was looking into the contract: “I will mainly look at the parts of the contract that relate to response times and the remedies available to the county when there is a material breach of the contract, such as the ongoing failure of AMR to meet the response time requirements. There are valid questions around these issues, and the public has an interest in the answers to those questions.”