Transition from private to county-run has been smooth for Washington County Ambulance Service

In July, Washington County took over the privately-owned Washington County Ambulance Service, making it an official county-run operation.

Now, more than six months into the change, Ambulance Service Director Jeremy Peck said that the transition has gone smoothly.

'It's actually been very smooth going from the private to the county,” Peck said. 'I worked for the private service here, as well, so I had a pretty good idea of how operations were running.

'For the most part, everything was a smooth transition, and we didn't have any issues.”

The biggest change was the addition of a second ambulance station south of Kalona on 133rd Street, to help better serve residents in the northern tier of Washington County.

The building is owned by the city of Kalona, and the service occupies the space rent-free, only paying for utilities.

The cities of Kalona and Wellman each paid $22,500 to help renovate the station, while the city of Riverside pitched in $15,000.

Having the new station has allowed the ambulance service to divide the county into two districts, essentially divided north and south of 190th Street.

District 1, which includes Ainsworth, Brighton, Crawfordsville, Keota, Richland, Washington, Wayland and West Chester, is mainly served by the Washington station.

District 2, which includes Kalona, Riverside and Wellman, is mainly served by the station south of Kalona.

'We have two trucks on the streets 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Peck said. 'That has allowed us to respond quicker to the citizens in the north end of the county.”

Since the change in July, response times in District 1 average 9.84 minute,s and in District 2, 12.13 minutes.

'That's the time we are paged to the time we get on scene,” Peck said. 'That's not the time from when the call comes in.

'If there are two calls in one district or the other, the other truck has to come out of the district and go cover.”

Peck said that he has received feedback from both Kalona and Wellman, but Riverside has not reached out with any feedback.

'The increase in response time for their people, they're very satisfied,” Peck said. 'Riverside has not reached out specifically to us.

'With the previous service, drive time to Riverside was somewhere from 20-25 minutes. We've been able to cut that almost in half.”

Both Kalona City Administrator Ryan Schlabaugh and Wellman City Administrator Kelly Litwiller praised the ambulance service.

'From our perspective, what we're seeing has been positive,” Schlabaugh said. 'The proximity has really helped.”

Litwiller said, 'I think it's gone great. That's what we were hoping would happen.”

Riverside City Administrator Christine Yancey was more reserved, saying that response times to Riverside had only been decreased by about five minutes.

'It was not as much as we had hoped,” Yancey said.

Before the transition of the ambulance service, the Riverside City Council considered starting its own city-operated ambulance service.

'It's always still on the table, but it's not been brought back up by the council,” Yancey said. 'We're waiting to see more of the call volume. The number of calls went way up.”

She added that as Riverside continues to quickly grow, the proposal may need to be considered again.

Peck said that calls have increased since the county took over the service.

'We are up 400 calls from what the previous service would run in the course of six months,” Peck said. 'In the first six months, we ran 1,453 calls.

'There's no reason to it other than we are also picking up transfers from hospitals and bringing them back to residences and nursing homes when the medical necessity is there to need an ambulance.”

He explained that the transfers are done by a separate crew.

'Part of those calls are above and beyond the two crews who are on 911 calls every day,” he said. 'We have two crews on the street, but we have an additional crew that comes in to pick up those transfers above what we generally have on staff. That helps generate revenue to offset the budget.”

The service currently has 15 full-time and nine part-time ambulance crew members.

Full-timers each work a 24-hour shift and a 16-hour shift each week.

Part-timers work eight, 12, 16 and 24-hour shifts, depending on where the fill-in slots are.

'We now have people who are willing to come in if there are more than two calls that come in,” Peck said. 'We had that before, but they're coming in more often.

'Our call volume has increased, so the necessity for them to come in is greater. They're more attentive to the pager and willing to come in and help with those calls.”