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Supervisors refuse to jump EMS ship

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The Plumas County Board of Supervisors decided to avoid hysteria and remained patient while considering how to react to a new trend in other counties' choices of local emergency medical service authority providers at a meeting Tuesday, March 9.

Chairwoman Sherrie Thrall began the discussion on the item by telling the audience in the boardroom, "There's been a ton of correspondence and e-mails and lobbying of all kinds" regarding the trend.

County Public Health Department Director Mimi Hall told supervisors two counties have recently left NorCal EMS, the local service for Plumas, after being with the group since 1997.

Hall said several other counties claimed it was time for everyone involved with NorCal to jump ship.

In a short telephone interview, Hall said all counties have to have a LEMSA, an independent agency to ensure all medical personnel and organizations stay in compliance with rules about licensing, certification and training.

She also said NorCal provided services to Plumas that other groups wouldn't, such as upkeep of the county emergency communication systems.

At the board meeting, Plumas County Administrative Officer Jack Ingstad told the supervisors Shasta County's CAO invited him to meetings to see what the remaining counties should do in reaction to two counties leaving NorCal, but Ingstad could not attend the meetings.

He said several CAOs pulled him aside at a meeting in Sacramento recently and told him several CAOs were planning to tell their county boards they should move to a rival of NorCal, Sierra-Sacramento Valley EMS Agency, the same organization that the previous two counties moved to.

Ingstad told the board he didn't know much about the issue at the time so he forwarded information to Thrall and Hall.

He explained the county's contract with NorCal was about to expire and the other CAOs were going before their boards soon, possibly even that same day.

Ingstad said he had a feeling NorCal would probably have to make some changes if all five of the counties, whose CAOs approached him, decided to leave the group, leaving only four.

Thrall summed up his concern, "If they start losing most of their member counties how viable are they?"

Hall said she thought most of the counties were assuming NorCal wouldn't be viable if any large counties decided to leave the group but she didn't necessarily agree with that prediction.

"One of the large counties considering leaving is Shasta County. There's a lot of work that costs a lot of money that goes along with Shasta County because they have a designated trauma center."

The director said she met with the county's emergency medical care coordinating committee the previous Tuesday, with a representative from Sierra County in attendance and a NorCal representative on the phone.

Hall said the NorCal representative cleared up a lot of her concerns and offered to

give a new proposal to counties considering switching over to Sierra-Sac.

Ingstad said NorCal previously asked the five CAOs who were pushing for the move to Sierra-Sac to attend a meeting to see a new proposal and they declined to even have that discussion.

Hall said the NorCal representative told her Modoc, Sierra and Glenn counties were willing to hear more and see if they could get a better deal for the four of them than if they moved to the other group.

She also told the board it was very expensive and time-consuming to change from one LEMSA to another.

Hall said a representative from another county recently told her he thought it might be difficult for Sac-Sierra to take on nine new counties at once.

She told the supervisors the state didn't move its funding for a county's participation over from one group to another until the year after the move was made; Sierra-Sac could be dealing with all those new counties without any additional funding for the first year.

Hall summed up, saying the supervisors should get proposals from both groups and receive input from county hospitals and other local emergency service agencies before making a decision.

Ingstad said a decision would have to be made before July, when the county budget needed to be prepared.

Thrall said it was worrisome half the CAOs in the NorCal group wanted to leave.

Hall told her there was a political history to the events. "I think that some of these counties are taking their feelings on one issue and transposing it onto another."

Ingstad touched on that issue later in the meeting, explaining all CAOs got an e-mail from NorCal in March 2009.

He said the e-mail indicated, "Fees would need to be increased for counties, hospitals and ambulance services," because of NorCal's fiscal situation.

"In the current year the board approved balancing the budget by taking $70,000 from the agencies' reserves. The problem is greater in fiscal year 2009 and 2010 and there is no more reserve."

Hall said NorCal went through a hearing and audit process because of problems in a program separate from the one the counties participated in.

"It did cause some bad feelings in some counties that this other business they went into didn't go well, was effecting their financial ... they had to use some reserves to pay for legal costs and the counties felt like 'those are our reserves, you know they came from our fees' and that's sort of the source of the bad feelings."

Ingstad and Thrall seemed to agree the letter and mass exodus of counties from the group were warning signs, but that it didn't make sense that the counties had refused to even hear a new proposal from NorCal.

Hall once again indicated there was a political history to the events. "It's not just the five want to leave. They want nine. They want everyone to go. They don't want NorCal to continue."

She went on to predict she could have proposals from both groups within a month-and-a-half.

Supervisor Ole Olsen said NorCal had given the county briefings before and he wanted Hall to offer the group some time on the board agenda to explain the situation to the supervisors.

Swofford agreed, saying the county should at least give NorCal a chance to defend itself after 25 years of service.



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© 2010 The Chester Progressive Chester, California. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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