Ambulance provider fined for being late

Slow response times continue to plague Arizona-based Rural/Metro Ambulance Services, which serves the City of San Diego.

In an October 3, 2016, letter from Rural/Metro director of communications Mike Rice to San Diego fire chief Christopher Heiser, the company admitted to failing to meet response time standards and have agreed to pay a $291,000 fine to the city.

According to the letter, from July 2016 to September 2016 Rural/Metro responded to 28,931 calls for service. Of those calls, medical teams were late on 2916 occasions, nearly a 90 percent compliance rate. However, included in those calls are a number of categories where response times fell as low as 85 percent.

The vast number of late responses occurred in so-called level 1 and level 2 calls, which involve life-threatening situations. In those cases, ambulance crews arrived over the eight-minute threshold.

Rural/Metro was fined $71,000 for "outlier" calls, where crews take more than 24 minutes to respond to emergency calls.

The fines for slow response times are nothing new. Last year Rural/Metro was dinged $230,000 for delayed response times during the same three-month span.

In a letter, the company blamed the slow times on staffing shortages.

"The challenges are largely due to a staffing shortage which is reverberating throughout the state as well as the nation within the EMS community," wrote Rice. "Our top priority has always been — and continues to be — to provide excellent service and patient care to the citizens of San Diego."

Rice says the company is currently implementing an "aggressive mitigation plan to improve staffing and contractual compliance within the City of San Diego."

The city council's Public Safety Committee will discuss the fines during an October 26 meeting.