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Doña Ana County and the City of Las Cruces will no longer contract out ambulance services with AMR and will take over emergency responses come September.
On May 23, the city, county and other municipalities received a letter from American Medical Response — a private entity that provides emergency medical services — stating that AMR requested a stipend increase of $2.2 million totaling $5.2 million in total if accepted, Dan Trujillo, public information officer for Las Cruces, told the Bulletin. The city and county, instead, decided to terminate the contract.
This comes after multiple complaints from the city and county about slow response times that AMR allegedly underperformed consistently what the contract required. AMR previously told the Bulletin that there are “many complexities with response time data and measuring performance with the data provided by the City has been challenging.”
AMR said that the boost in budget was necessary to put more ambulances in service and create its own dispatch which the company said was needed to meet the city and county’s demand.
“Adding resources to any system requires investment regardless of who provides them,” west region vice president of operations for AMR Joaquin Grahm said in a statement.
AMR also cited reports that show that private providers have the “lowest cost per response of any ambulance ownership type.”
In a statement, the City of Las Cruces said that it is “preparing a plan for ambulance services in Las Cruces.” The plan will go before the City Council in “the next few weeks.”
The contract is scheduled to end on September 20.
The county said in a statement that it “will be taking over emergency medical services in coordination with municipal partners.”
A proposed budget currently working its way towards being accepted by the county allocates funding for 41 new positions for Fire Rescue Services including three EMT’s and 16 firefighter EMT’s.
The county said that these positions will help support the transition but “they are not solely related to the county’s assumption of emergency services.”
The budget is scheduled to be voted on at the July 29 Board of County Commissioners meeting.
