New contract increase ambulance coverage in Deer Park area

Residents in the Deer Park area have likely noticed that an American Medical Response ambulance has been responding to calls for sick and injured residents, thanks to a new contract in place between AMR and Spokane County Fire District 4.

The new contract was necessary because of the rising number of calls for service, said Fire Chief Bill Neckels. It took effect in mid-December. “We had to look at an opportunity to provide a service our residents deserve,” he said.

The new ambulance and its crews are based at Station 41 in Deer Park. The ambulance crews actually live at the station alongside the fire station crew, providing 24-hour-a-day coverage. “Their crews are integrated with our crews,” Neckels said. “It’s worked very well for us.”

The addition has been a long time coming as the district has spent years evaluating what to do about the rising number of calls. “We were facing challenges meeting the response need clear back in 2020,” he said.

For more than 20 years the district contracted with Deer Park Ambulance, which usually has three ambulances in service at once. But not all of those ambulances could offer advanced life support. The solution to that was to send a fire district paramedic in a pickup truck to medical calls to back up the ambulance crew, but that didn’t always work, Neckels said.

The district’s call volume has gone up 80 % since 2006, stretching Deer Park Ambulance to the limit, Neckels said. The ambulance company serves a wide area, including part of Stevens County. Sometimes ambulances would show up very late or not at all if there wasn’t one available, Neckels said. “They just did not have the wherewithal to respond,” he said.

District 4 started partnering with South Pend Oreille Fire and Rescue until they, too, got overwhelmed. “We just overwhelmed their system,” he said. “They’re all volunteers.”

The district then bought its own ambulance, which solved one problem while creating another. There was now a dedicated ambulance to take patients to local hospitals, but the district was unable to get a transport license for it, which meant they couldn’t charge patients for their ambulance rides as a way to recoup their costs.

Only three transport licenses are in use in Spokane County, two of them held by AMR and Deer Park Ambulance. Without a transport license and no way to have the ambulance pay for itself, the district kept using it. “We ran our ambulance heavily,” Neckels said.

Now the district has a series of choices it can use as ambulances get busy, since any ambulance that takes a patient from the Deer Park area to a Spokane hospital will be out of service for quite some time.

The Deer Park AMR unit will get the first call, then Deer Park Ambulance. After that, the district could check and see if another AMR ambulance is available in the southern part of the district. If not, then the district will use its own ambulance, which still doesn’t have a transport license. “The objective is getting the patient to the hospital,” he said.

The key part of the new contract with AMR is that the citizens aren’t paying for it, Neckels said. It is simply an agreement that AMR will treat and transport patients in District 4. Patients and/or their health insurance will be billed for any ambulance transport.

What makes the contract special is that the ambulance crews are living in a fire station. “This is the first of its kind program in Spokane County,” said AMR paramedic Josh Traxel, who is assigned to the Deer Park AMR ambulance.

It seems to be a popular option, at least among AMR staff. “Everyone was very excited about doing this,” Traxel said. “It was definitely an in-demand posting.”

Traxel said he and his fellow paramedics and EMTs have felt very welcomed in Deer Park. “The community has been great,” he said.

Neckels said things have been going smoothly ever since the AMR contract took effect. “It’s been going very well,” he said. “I couldn’t be happier with how it’s been going.”