Faster is better

J. Craig Anderson

Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005 | 7:19 a.m.

WHAT'S THE BIG RUSH?

The penalties imposed on two area ambulance companies has changed. Here's the breakdown:

Old agreement:

New agreement:

* Response-time limits are based on the severity of the emergency, with more critical calls requiring an arrival time of less than nine minutes

They say you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but does the same hold true for ambulances?

Clark County and Las Vegas have approved new franchise agreements with American Medical Response and MedicWest Ambulance that include incentives for faster responses and penalties for late arrivals.

The new contracts also include a service rate increase of nearly 18 percent, which ambulance company representatives say brings prices in line with other markets.

Both the city and county have amended ordinances to conform to the new agreements, with Las Vegas adopting its changes Nov. 2 and Clark County doing so Tuesday.

The North Las Vegas City Council is scheduled to vote on similar changes tonight.

AMR officials said overall the response-time restrictions will be tougher when the new agreements take effect Dec. 1, and they expect to pay more penalties than in the past.

But the new rules also reduce penalties if ambulances are on time at least 91 percent of the time. Those penalties become progressively smaller as a company's monthly on-time average improves.

"The idea is that if we are going above and beyond what the contract called for, then we should be penalized less," said Lee Haney of Rogich Communications Group, which represents AMR.

Under the old agreements, ambulance companies paid a penalty of $11.57 per minute -- up to $173.31 per service call -- for arriving late.

Response-time limits are based on the severity of the emergency, with the more critical calls requiring an arrival time of less than nine minutes.

With the new contracts, ambulance services will pay a flat $12 fee for arriving late, and an additional $100 penalty if they take 15 minutes or longer to respond.

The Clark County and North Las Vegas contracts also impose a new penalty of $5,000 for each month during which ambulance companies fail to meet or exceed the 90 percent compliance rate. Las Vegas uses a similar but tiered penalty system.

An exemption for rainy weather has been eliminated, and delays caused by long waits at the emergency room will only be excused one out of every seven times, as opposed to all of the time under the old arrangements.

"We don't want any more exemptions," Clark County principal management analyst Roma Haynes said.

Ambulance companies have been paying an average of $7,000 to $8,000 per month in penalties to Clark County, Haynes said.

The average ambulance response time in Clark County has increased from 5 minutes, 31 seconds in 1996 to 6 minutes, 53 seconds this year, Haynes said. Average wait times at hospital emergency rooms have increased much more -- from 25 minutes, 53 seconds to 49 minutes, 53 seconds.

J. Craig Anderson can be reached at 259-2320 or at craig@lasvegassun.com.