City officials have signed a contract outlining how ambulance services will operate in Columbus and Bartholomew County for the next four years.
The Board of Public Works and Safety on Tuesday approved its part of an emergency services agreement with the county and Columbus Regional Health (CRH), which will last from 2025 to 2028.
The agreement states that CRH will provide 911 emergency ambulance services to the city and county, with the city agreeing to “provide certain equipment facilities and assistance in connection with such services.”
It will now await signatures from the Bartholomew County commissioners and CRH trustees to be fully-approved. Each entity is covering one-third of the cost of the agreement, which was recommended by the Emergency Ambulance Services Board (EASB) earlier this month, Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon said.
Among the more notable changes is that the number of 911 ambulances is increasing from four to five. This is because officials found there to be an increasing number of ambulance calls in recent years and sometimes not an adequate number available.
CRH currently owns the ambulances, but if and when the agreement is approved by the other two parties, they will be jointly-owned. Ferdon said CRH also owns its own transport ambulances as well.
“We know that 911 calls through dispatch for emergency continue to increase over the past decade, particularly around ambulance calls,” Mayor Ferdon said. “We knew there was a lot of changes that needed to be implemented within the system based upon response times and the perceived need for more ambulances.”
Because of this, the city, county and CRH in 2023 engaged in a Six Sigma analysis to study the causes of increased medical calls and look for potential solutions.
“The focus was how could we respond differently? We looked at who responds to an incident and can we have first responders and then secondary (responders) as needed?” the mayor said, adding officials have also discussed instituting chase vehicles.
According to 2023 numbers provided by the EASB’s oversight committee, local emergency medical services (EMS) responded to 10,475 calls for service, up 1.1% over 2022. While final numbers for 2024 aren’t yet available, there has been a 3.3% increase in calls for service between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, Ferdon said.
In addition, the Columbus Fire Department and 10 local area volunteer fire departments were dispatched to 16,671 calls for service in 2023, a 25.1% increase over 2022. It’s important to point out that not all of those calls were ambulance-related, but it’s symbolic of a steady increase of 911 and medical services calls in the county.
The agreement also specifies where each ambulance will be based, determined by the population-size of a given area.
The locations for next year will be:
- EMS 1 at Columbus Township, 4830 Progress Drive
- EMS 2 remains at 2702 Central Avenue
- EMS 3 at Clay Township Fire Department Station #2, 9922 E 25th St.
- EMS 4 at Columbus Township Fire & Rescue Station #221, 933 Repp Drive
- EMS 5, CFD Station #5, 100 Goeller Court
The agreement also has annual financial review built in so the county auditor, city controller and CRH can understand costs better and look for ways to be more efficient, the mayor said.
— This story was updated to correct the ambulance numbers relating to the stations.
