S.L. facing ambulance-service gap

Salt Lake City wants in on the ambulance business, but the capital's current provider could be leaving town before the city can get its own operation up and running.

With the possibility of a city-owned ambulance service roughly two years and $4 million away, officials say, Southwest Ambulance will leave the Salt Lake market when its contract expires Dec. 21 if a new deal cannot be negotiated.

Southwest's parent company, Rural Metro, said an inability to persuade the Legislature to allow the company to provide non-emergency services resulted in Southwest's departure.

"We provide only emergency 911 response," said Rural Metro director of communications Liz Merritt, speaking to the Deseret News from Arizona. "It was important for us to also provide non-emergency transport as well. We have attempted for four years to have that law changed."

Tuesday, city officials said the city hoped to obtain a 911 license itself, providing a number of options for handling ambulance service in the future.

"We would be in control of the license, and that gives us a lot of flexibility in the contracting," said Salt Lake Fire spokesman Scott Freitag.

The city is exploring the possibility of a short-term cooperative agreement that would provide ambulance services until the city gets its own service going.

Memos received by the Deseret News between the mayor's office and council members show the mayor's office believes self-providing ambulance service is in the best long-term interest of the city. The problem is start-up costs may be too much under the current economic conditions.

"There are significant start-up costs," said David Everitt, Mayor Ralph Becker's chief of staff, "and with the budget year shaping up the way it is, it would not be an easy thing to get done."

Handling ambulance services in-house would help the fire department simplify its efforts, Everitt said, and could mean sending one emergency vehicle to a call where the department currently sends both an ambulance and fire engine.

That would add up to savings over the long run, he said, but it could take more than six years to recoup the $4.7 million in start-up costs.

Even in the short term, the city is looking at paying more for ambulance services, Everitt said.

"No matter what we do, it's going to cost us more," he said. "There's no getting around that."

How much more, Everitt said, remains to be seen.

But at Rural Metro's Salt Lake office, hope for a new deal is still alive.

Raleigh Bunch, division general manager for Southwest in Salt Lake, said while changes do need to be made to keep his company around, a final decision to leave Utah has not been made.