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In a Nov. 17 letter, the mayors of three east county cities demand Multnomah County address its lack of readily available ambulances. They say the delays in emergency response are disproportionately impacting east county, where ambulances must travel farther to and from Portland’s major hospitals.
“As a result, when a call generates from East County, it takes 10-20 minutes to replace coverage and a second call during that timeframe can cause even longer response times,” reads the letter signed by the mayors of Troutdale, Wood Village and Fairview.
Ambulances have been slow to arrive across Multnomah County for over a year, thanks to a nationwide paramedic staffing crisis that has left the county’s contractor, American Medical Response, struggling to staff its full fleet of ambulances. There are currently 50 open, unstaffed shifts, according to the letter. The county recently fined AMR $500,000 for not meeting contractual response time guidelines.
The letter endorses a strategy to fix the problem proposed by AMR—replacing one of the two paramedics in each ambulance with a lesser-trained emergency medical technician.
According to AMR, Multnomah County is the only one of its “267 operations” that has a “dual medic requirement,” says the letter. Doing so, AMR claims, would allow the company to fully staff its ambulances within four months. AMR recently expanded its operations to Washington County, where it is facing similar staffing pressures.
“The staffing crisis in Multnomah County is entirely solvable, and on behalf of the residents of East Multnomah County, we urge you to adopt the 1 Paramedic/1 EMT staffing solution, immediately,” reads the letter.
The county’s emergency medical director, Dr. Jonathan Jui, has so far tossed out the idea, saying it results in worse patient outcomes. He’s promoting an alternative strategy of introducing a separate tier of dual-EMT ambulances to respond to low-priority calls.