911 bids in 2015 (LA COUNTY)

Mike S

Forum Probie
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I believe LA City would sub it to a staffing company first as they depend on the income. They are talking about downgrading more and more BLS calls to BLS only units (still LA City). They have used us for back up recently which has been unheard of ever before. There is no way they will give up control or make any major change as they will lose their 201 rights.

LACO. The committee has only spoken of adding CAAS and mileage and age limits to be lesser than what is allowed for non-emergency. Seems 150k miles and 5 years is mentioned but no specific type of units.

TFD has not gotten any changes approved by the State EMS and they would need to have the county run a bid and they would need to bid on it. The state guidelines would need to be followed to be able to award it to TFD to retain 201 rights or get them. Otherwise it will not be an EOA and subject to rotation.

Many FDs are trying to get the bread and butter by staffing a couple units and keeping them busy to get the most revenue and trying to get the private industry to thwart the cost of waiting for the 3rd plus active call before their wheels role. Unfortunately those plans leave little for the provider and become secondary. When privates take over a contract they are expected to provide at least some depth for back up of the primary units. With 2 units it would be impossible to cover Torrance and would provide no depth for back up. Surrounding cities will want to charge if they rely on the services too often and LA CO takes some time to respond to areas they are not responsible for as a primary and LA City generally wont do it or are just too busy. Staffing 2 would put lives at risk as they will not be able to subsidize an back up company off those revenues.

Morale: We get many first time EMTs that apply. Many first jobs. People want to run all 911 which we do not offer. We offer rotation into 911 areas but never totally 911 unless they are a station supervisor assigned to SAMO. We lose EMTs often times due to morale or money. The overwhelming majority of EMTs that stay in the industry request to come back. Probably close to 80% of those that go to other companies. That is a pretty good sign of a good company. What really sets people off is we have a no-rehire policy without a 100% approval vote from supervision/management and only if they gave a full 2 week notice. Generally once denied we see/hear that they are extremely disgruntled with us. We offer 24s and that is a rate thing. We do not want to offer 24s but we do it because every time we discuss eliminating them the crews want them. We do a ton for our crews by offering 8, 10, 12, and 24s and offer a ton of training programs to help them grow. The issue with many EMTs also is they really do not want to be EMTs and become frustrated waiting to become a cop, FF, Paramedic, nurse, etc., although we try to help them with these goals it is really up to them. We try to give them all we can to enjoy their jobs but really any day is up to them and if they make the best of it they will enjoy it if not the same day can be hated by someone else. In the past crossing units on non-emergency calls was a huge issue and we still strive to fix that but have gotten better. That is frustrating for EMTs and us. All in all ambulance companies are the same. We make less so our budget is tighter because we would never try the very profitable things that many LA Companies do (Dialysis and non-covered services and trying to make them covered). When your employees are asked to "create" justification or leave it blank you may make a ton more and may have an easier day but it is ILLEGAL and we wont do it or ask our staff to no matter how easy it would be to do it. We also wont give kickbacks to hospitals for lucrative contracts so we must operate in our "safe" budget. You can love your job if you come in and do you check sheet, do you station duties, and run your calls. I am always monitoring and always available for employee comments. I spend probably 2 hours a day responding to employees questions and comments. Not many owners would do that or walk away form the biggest non-emergency contract in LA only because it was causing morale issues. Hospitals often times treat EMTs poorly and that is frustrating and is difficult for EMTs to keep their head high and it is sad and not like that in other areas. Kaiser treated our staff, all of them, poorly and made our units run to death on long responses back to back. I elected to walk away from them solely based on how they treated us. The EMTs that worked for us during the Kaiser years can attest that it was horrible and we were run ragged with no thank yous just unfounded complaints. Bottom line is I care about our EMTs daily lives and we are family operated. Undercover boss would be rough since the EMT forms need to be filled out true and correct. I certainly don't mind running calls or going on long hard disaster responses myself.

The job is what it is. It is a stepping stone and Medicare is lowering rates over and over and more and more 911 agencies that do transport are coming up with alternative plans due to lower R/Is not being worth it. Downey tried but got no takers. Orange tried and got no takers.

I get occasional emails from EMT life so I pop on and try to explain things from my eyes. I don't do it that often and I just don't have the time with my regular job and 3 boys to raise but I do like to put it out there. Anyone can comment but don't take my lack of comment of agreeing or disagreeing just that I have said what I can and what you think of it or do with it is up to you.
 

blueprint

Forum Probie
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Does anyone know why the McCormick sale never went through with Care/Falck? Will the same happen with Gerber?
 

LACoGurneyjockey

Forum Asst. Chief
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Not my monkeys, not my circus.
But last I heard LA City's BLS is all going to Gerber, LA County is putting out their own ALS ambulances, the Torrance contract is going to GCTI, and Americare already sold out to Falck.
Oh, and isn't Falck owned by the Russian mob?
 
Last edited by a moderator:

MedicJon88

Forum Crew Member
59
4
8
Not my monkeys, not my circus.
But last I heard LA City's BLS is all going to Gerber, LA County is putting out their own ALS ambulances, the Torrance contract is going to GCTI, and Americare already sold out to Falck.
Oh, and isn't Falck owned by the Russian mob?

Super Troll?
 

PotatoMedic

Has no idea what I'm doing.
2,703
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No... They are owned by Lego land!
 

TransportJockey

Forum Chief
8,623
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Not my monkeys, not my circus.
But last I heard LA City's BLS is all going to Gerber, LA County is putting out their own ALS ambulances, the Torrance contract is going to GCTI, and Americare already sold out to Falck.
Oh, and isn't Falck owned by the Russian mob?

Falck is a multi-national company based in Denmark. Think AMR on steroids. But from what I understand they don't have too bad of a reputation
 

lukgiel

Forum Asst. Chief
Premium Member
762
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Falck is a multi-national company based in Denmark. Think AMR on steroids. But from what I understand they don't have too bad of a reputation

I wonder if I can transfer to the denmark base, my parents house isn't too far lmaoo
 

TransportJockey

Forum Chief
8,623
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I wonder if I can transfer to the denmark base, my parents house isn't too far lmaoo

Heh if American EMS wasn't so backwards it might be possible.
 

lukgiel

Forum Asst. Chief
Premium Member
762
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Falck services I think 18 countries, mainly in europe
 

usalsfyre

You have my stapler
4,319
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I believe LA City would sub it to a staffing company first as they depend on the income. They are talking about downgrading more and more BLS calls to BLS only units (still LA City). They have used us for back up recently which has been unheard of ever before. There is no way they will give up control or make any major change as they will lose their 201 rights.

LACO. The committee has only spoken of adding CAAS and mileage and age limits to be lesser than what is allowed for non-emergency. Seems 150k miles and 5 years is mentioned but no specific type of units.

TFD has not gotten any changes approved by the State EMS and they would need to have the county run a bid and they would need to bid on it. The state guidelines would need to be followed to be able to award it to TFD to retain 201 rights or get them. Otherwise it will not be an EOA and subject to rotation.

Many FDs are trying to get the bread and butter by staffing a couple units and keeping them busy to get the most revenue and trying to get the private industry to thwart the cost of waiting for the 3rd plus active call before their wheels role. Unfortunately those plans leave little for the provider and become secondary. When privates take over a contract they are expected to provide at least some depth for back up of the primary units. With 2 units it would be impossible to cover Torrance and would provide no depth for back up. Surrounding cities will want to charge if they rely on the services too often and LA CO takes some time to respond to areas they are not responsible for as a primary and LA City generally wont do it or are just too busy. Staffing 2 would put lives at risk as they will not be able to subsidize an back up company off those revenues.

Morale: We get many first time EMTs that apply. Many first jobs. People want to run all 911 which we do not offer. We offer rotation into 911 areas but never totally 911 unless they are a station supervisor assigned to SAMO. We lose EMTs often times due to morale or money. The overwhelming majority of EMTs that stay in the industry request to come back. Probably close to 80% of those that go to other companies. That is a pretty good sign of a good company. What really sets people off is we have a no-rehire policy without a 100% approval vote from supervision/management and only if they gave a full 2 week notice. Generally once denied we see/hear that they are extremely disgruntled with us. We offer 24s and that is a rate thing. We do not want to offer 24s but we do it because every time we discuss eliminating them the crews want them. We do a ton for our crews by offering 8, 10, 12, and 24s and offer a ton of training programs to help them grow. The issue with many EMTs also is they really do not want to be EMTs and become frustrated waiting to become a cop, FF, Paramedic, nurse, etc., although we try to help them with these goals it is really up to them. We try to give them all we can to enjoy their jobs but really any day is up to them and if they make the best of it they will enjoy it if not the same day can be hated by someone else. In the past crossing units on non-emergency calls was a huge issue and we still strive to fix that but have gotten better. That is frustrating for EMTs and us. All in all ambulance companies are the same. We make less so our budget is tighter because we would never try the very profitable things that many LA Companies do (Dialysis and non-covered services and trying to make them covered). When your employees are asked to "create" justification or leave it blank you may make a ton more and may have an easier day but it is ILLEGAL and we wont do it or ask our staff to no matter how easy it would be to do it. We also wont give kickbacks to hospitals for lucrative contracts so we must operate in our "safe" budget. You can love your job if you come in and do you check sheet, do you station duties, and run your calls. I am always monitoring and always available for employee comments. I spend probably 2 hours a day responding to employees questions and comments. Not many owners would do that or walk away form the biggest non-emergency contract in LA only because it was causing morale issues. Hospitals often times treat EMTs poorly and that is frustrating and is difficult for EMTs to keep their head high and it is sad and not like that in other areas. Kaiser treated our staff, all of them, poorly and made our units run to death on long responses back to back. I elected to walk away from them solely based on how they treated us. The EMTs that worked for us during the Kaiser years can attest that it was horrible and we were run ragged with no thank yous just unfounded complaints. Bottom line is I care about our EMTs daily lives and we are family operated. Undercover boss would be rough since the EMT forms need to be filled out true and correct. I certainly don't mind running calls or going on long hard disaster responses myself.

The job is what it is. It is a stepping stone and Medicare is lowering rates over and over and more and more 911 agencies that do transport are coming up with alternative plans due to lower R/Is not being worth it. Downey tried but got no takers. Orange tried and got no takers.

I get occasional emails from EMT life so I pop on and try to explain things from my eyes. I don't do it that often and I just don't have the time with my regular job and 3 boys to raise but I do like to put it out there. Anyone can comment but don't take my lack of comment of agreeing or disagreeing just that I have said what I can and what you think of it or do with it is up to you.

I would work for this guy.

He's got a realistic view of what EMS often is. We need this perspective more often on here, but when offered it's usually shouted down.
 

Chris07

Competent in Incompetence
342
62
28
But last I heard LA City's BLS is all going to Gerber, LA County is putting out their own ALS ambulances, the Torrance contract is going to GCTI, and Americare already sold out to Falck.
Oh, and isn't Falck owned by the Russian mob?

Ha! You funny!

Feed that rumor mill.
 

looker

Forum Asst. Chief
876
32
28
Rumor is that Americare Ambulance will soon be raided by FBI. Apparently few former employees are pissed at their do not hire policy and decided to talk to few guys that might be interested in their story :lol: Now this is only a rumor and could be totally false.
 

LACoGurneyjockey

Forum Asst. Chief
778
437
63
Rumor is that Americare Ambulance will soon be raided by FBI. Apparently few former employees are pissed at their do not hire policy and decided to talk to few guys that might be interested in their story :lol: Now this is only a rumor and could be totally false.

No way, I heard the exact same thing from this girl that used to work there. And that they had a few EMTs undercover there ( a la "Undercover Boss") just trying to put together enough intel for a search warrant. Because then it's all over, that's basically the same thing as a conviction for all intents and purposes (see the GCTI thread). I mean, rumors always come from somewhere and there's always a decent bit of truth to them. People don't just make stuff up for :censored::censored::censored::censored:s and giggles, that'd just be a waste of time and energy.
 

Chimpie

Site Administrator
Community Leader
6,368
812
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With a thread like this, let's make sure we follow this particular rule...

You agree that you will not use this site to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise in violation of any law. We have the ability to remove objectionable content and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary.
 

SkiMaskWay

Forum Crew Member
82
2
8
I WOULD LOSE ALL FAITH IN EMS IF AMBUSERVE GETS ANY FIRE CONTRACT.

Don't get me started on that company. I gave up a year of my life there. How they have been able to get and keep that CAAS accreditation brainf***s me every time I think about it.

Lord have mercy on all of Torrance's citizens if they get that contract.
Not to burst your bubble...but you actually have faith in LA county EMS?...
All we have in LA is a bunch of overworked, under paid , gurney jockeys working for private transport companies disguised as ambulances in order to charge an arm and a leg at the expense of the bright eyed EMTs hoping to some day win the FD lottery. Absolutely depressing. Only ones doing 911 are the Fire Dept employees protected by their Unions.... Its all politics man. Don't drink the kool aid.
 

LACoGurneyjockey

Forum Asst. Chief
778
437
63
So leave? Come join us in real EMS, in Kern, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, SLO.
Do you what the county EMSA is working for in my county? To keep FD from getting ALS engines, just so I feel that little bit more important on scene. It's a refreshing change coming from.
 
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