County ambulance commission will recommend Charles City and Floyd County sign new 3-year AMR contract

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Floyd County Ambulance Commission will recommend that the Charles City Council and the county Board of Supervisors approve a new three-year contract with AMR for ambulance service throughout the county.

What isn’t known yet is whether Nashua will be part of that contract.

The commission at its meeting this week voted to recommend approving one of two different contracts. The first splits the annual cost to subsidize AMR service three ways, with Charles City and Floyd County each paying 45% of the cost and Nashua paying 10%.

The other version splits the cost between Charles City and Floyd County, 50-50.

The Floyd County Medical Center Board of Trustees has already agreed to pay $100,000 toward the first year subsidy, reducing the other parties’ costs, but the trustees have not committed to additional years.

Regardless of how it is funded, the subsidy cost for the first year of the new contract with AMR would be $415,000, more than double the $200,000 subsidy cost in the third year of the current three-year contract that ends June 30. Years two and three of the new contract would see that cost increase by 3% each year, to $427,450 in year two and 440,273.50 in year three.

Splitting the remaining $315,000 for the first year 45-45-10 would mean total payments of $141,750 each for Charles City and the county, and $31,500 for Nashua.

If Charles City and the county have to split the total subsidy between themselves the cost would be $157,500 each, plus the $100,000 from the medical center.

John Ott, the Nashua city clerk, was at the county Ambulance Commission meeting Tuesday evening, and said the Nashua City Council had not yet decided whether to be a party to the new AMR contract.

Nashua is in the process of forming its own ambulance service, but it could require additional support from area ambulance services such as AMR or Chickasaw County EMS.

Ott said the Nashua council is still weighing the difference between signing the AMR contact and calling other ambulance services under mutual aid agreements when needed.

“Once we have our own service we have no idea how much other services will be needed,” he said, adding that finding people to staff the Nashua service during weekdays will likely be the most difficult.

Charles City Police Chief Hugh Anderson, a member of the Ambulance Commission, said that sounded like the Nashua council was looking for a way to get additional service without having to pay for it.

Charles City Administrator Steve Diers, an advisor to the commission, said it would be nice if the commission could decide that night to make a recommendation to the City Council and Board of Supervisors, because the current contract will expire at the end of June.

Dawn Staudt, station supervisor for AMR, said there have been probably 20 to 30 calls into Nashua since the first of January, when a six-month agreement began where Nashua paid $5,000 each ($10,000 total) to Charles City and Floyd County to be included in AMR service.

When asked where those patients were transported, Staudt said many of them requested to go to Waverly because that’s where they usually get medical care.

County Supervisor Jim Jorgensen, the chair of the commission, asked why people would be transported to Waverly when the Floyd County Medical Center was offering to chip in $100,000 toward the Floyd County ambulance service cost.

Dawnett Willis is the CEO of the medical center and a member of the Ambulance Commission, and she commented, “I was wondering the same thing.”

Staudt said the state guideline is that patients be transported to the closest facility with the appropriate level of care. Patients can request to go somewhere else, but they are told that if it’s farther than some other appropriate facility then their insurance will not cover the cost of the extra mileage, which can be significant.

In the end the commission voted to recommend both contracts to the Charles City Council and Floyd County Board of Supervisors, with those bodies signing whichever contract is appropriate based on whether Nashua wants to be part of it or not.

“Nashua needs to make a decision,” said Diers.

One of the changes in the proposed new contract compared to the current contract is that either party can get out of the contract with 180 days notice. The current contract required a payment to AMR if the city and county would have terminated early.

The city and county are still looking for alternatives to AMR service because of the rapidly increasing subsidy cost. One option would be to start a public ambulance service, but funding to start that could depend on successful passage of an emergency medical services levy in the county.

County residents turned that levy down in the last election, in November 2022. Floyd County supervisors have started the process of again declaring EMS an essential service in the county, which could lead to another EMS levy vote in the coming election this November.