American Medical Response (AMR) has been operating as the sole Ambulance provider for Merced County for nine months. They won the contract from longtime provider RIGGs last year.
“It has been a great partnership,” Daniel Iniguez, AMR Regional Director for the Central Valley, told The Express. He said, “We’re meeting all of our contractual obligations and then some.”
One of those requirements is to be “on time 90 percent of the time,” which AMR is. “I know we’re far above that 90 percent,” Iniguez said.
Los Banos Fire Chief Brandon Dorenbush was very pleased with their performance. He said they were on time 94 percent of the time, way above the previous ambulance service.
Dorenbush stated that the average response time was 12 minutes, 59 seconds. Dorenbush said the city and AMR were still “bridging the gap” between them to make operations smoother.
Merced County’s rural roads and population distribution provided a challenge for AMR. A challenge they’ve mitigated by splitting their staff into two.
“We’ve really done a lot of work in building a posting plan that doesn’t just cover the more populated area but covers more of the rural areas as well and areas that are farther out in the county.
“We’ve built two separate posting plans, an east and a west posting plan, to support those communities, and it’s worked really well so far,” Iniguez explained.
The roughly 24 ambulances and their crews that operate every day are split into these two plans. Each day the postings change based on “heat maps” and data predicting “where the next call (is) most likely will come from,” Iniguez said.
Ambulances in the west are posted at street corners or in nearby substations until calls come through from operators. There are substations in Los Banos and Dos Palos.
One of the largest complaints from the public opposed to AMR winning the contract last year was the loss of institutional knowledge from the previous company, RIGGs, built in decades of serving Merced.
According to Iniguez, AMR “hired probably 98 percent of the existing RIGGs personnel. Including some of the RIGGs leadership staff.”
He continued, “Now we’re able to just better support them with new equipment, new ambulances, a new philosophy and a way of doing business.”
AMR is hoping to do more than just provide ambulances in the county, and within the next 90 days they plan to launch a local Nurse Navigation program.
According to Iniguez, there are times when 911 callers are calling for non-emergencies. “Let’s say someone called 911 because they needed to refill their medication. You’d be surprised people do that.
“(A Nurse Navigator) can set you up with a lift that can bring you to the pharmacy to refill your medication and then bring you back home, without having to go to the ER.”
Nurse Navigators can also arrange non-ambulance trips to urgent care and arrange doctor or telehealth appointments.
The goal is to “get the right care to a person in the time that’s appropriate, and not to the ER if it’s not needed. But it also frees up resources to be able to respond to critical emergencies when they’re needed. Because they’re not tied up on (non-critical emergencies),” Iniguez explained.
Iniguez finished his interview stating, “We were very excited to have been chosen as a trusted partner to bring emergency ambulance service to Merced County and Westside.
“We’re going to move forward and make sure that we make good on our promises and provide the services that we said we would.”
