The Lake County News-Sun has an article about the Village of Antioch extending their contract for EMS with Superior.
ANTIOCH — The village will continue to contract with Superior Air-Ground Ambulance Service for 90 more days, extending the initial contract made six months ago when the village terminated its 72-year relationship with the not-for-profit Antioch Rescue Squad.
“We are providing better service to our residents, cutting response time by 15 to 20 seconds,” said Antioch Fire Chief John Nixon. “Under the direction of the fire department, Superior has performed extremely well. We are providing enhanced level of care with our advanced life support engines answering each call with the ambulance. This means that we are sending at least four paramedics and EMTs to every call. Having that kind of response is crucial to dealing with the patient, talking to the family and taking a health history at the same time we are administering care.”
“We have made a transition of EMS services under battlefield conditions and so far, so good. I don’t see us going back to ARS,” said Trustee Dennis Crosby. “The value is being transparent and handling our own destiny,” he said, referring to the ARS policy of not sharing its policies, procedures and revenues with the public. “If we are providing better life-saving service to our residents, it is all worth the time and effort.”
After 90 days, the village will transition to using village-owned ambulances. “We have two fully-equipped ambulances with a third to be purchased and equipped at a future date as back-up,” said Nixon. “The plan is to get the first two ambulances to pass state inspection and get them on the street within the next 90 days.”
A new agreement will be negotiated with Superior or another provider for personnel to staff the ambulances that are housed at Station 1 downtown and Station 2 on Deep Lake Road.
In the first four months that the village has contracted with Superior Ambulance service, the ambulance company responded to 416 calls. The fire department responded to 226 fire calls, doubling village-provided life-safety services, said Nixon, who projects an annual increase from 1,000 fire calls to a combined total of 2,300 fire and EMS calls.
While fire services cost the village $585,000 annually, EMS personnel adds another $818,000 to personnel cost for 12 full-time paramedics with an additional $53,000 annually for each leased ambulance. “We will save $106,000 annually by eliminating the leased ambulances,” said Nixon.
The reason fire personnel costs are lower is that the department only has one full-time employee, Fire Chief Nixon, otherwise utilizing part-time paid, on-call firefighters. “Remember, this is just the village’s portion of the cost for fire services. The actual cost for fire protection is more than $1 million because we share them equally with the First Fire District.”
The village is working with the township, served by the First Fire Protection District, to work out a joint agreement to provide fire and rescue services. Historically the village has shared costs with the fire district for fire protection but each entity has been separately responsible for providing rescue service. The township is continuing to contract with ARS for rescue calls in the township.
