Editor's note: This is the first story in an occasional series that will cover the county's process of reviewing ambulance and emergency medical service. Today the Town Crier looks at the service in place with American Medical Response. Later stories will consider other companies bidding on the service. Proposals are due July 19. The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to make its final selection by the end of August.
Within minutes of filling up with gas and going back into service, the Los Altos-based ambulance from the Almond Avenue Fire Station received an emergency call at 11:23 a.m., last Wednesday.
A 45-year-old tree pruner in Santa Clara was locked in place, 35 feet above ground, by the 30,000-volt wire onto which his pine bough fell.
Kimberly Roderick, a 15-year veteran paramedic with American Medical Response that operates ambulance service in Santa Clara County, put the ambulance into gear, turned on lights and sirens, and headed toward the tree pruner.
Her partner, David Yee, 34, a paramedic of six months, grabbed a map and navigated.
"The most stressful part of our job is the driving," Roderick said, as she paused at red lights, making sure cars had stopped before heading through intersections.
Since most communities, except Sunnyvale, have paramedics on fire engines that get to a scene first, ambulances have a 12-minute clock for responding, Roderick said.
In communities without the paramedics on the fire engines, it's an eight-minute response time for AMR.
Santa Clara city firefighters were on the scene when the ambulance arrived.
The pruner's light-brown hair stood straight on end. The paramedics said his muscles and joints would be locked in place from the current going through him. He had a cardiac history and the paramedics worried about a heart attack, they said.
Workers from Silicon Power had the power off at 12:05 p.m. By 12:21 firefighters had the pruner down from the tree. Paramedics loaded him into the ambulance and headed to the trauma center at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose.
Roderick called ahead to Valley Med, alerting them to the pruner with 3/4- to 1-inch first and second degree burns in multiple locations on his body.
"This is a major trauma," Roderick said. "When we do an alert like this, they'll have every expert available."
The pruner talked and joked with paramedics on the way to the hospital. At 12:33 p.m. he was being wheeled through the emergency entrance into the trauma room. The paramedics, from AMR and Santa Clara City Fire, turned him over to the hospital emergency workers.
They agreed - it's nice to have a good outcome.
AMR and its predecessor companies have provided emergency medical services in Santa Clara County for more than 50 years. Since 1979 AMR has been the county's exclusive 911 ambulance provider, said Dawn Jackson, a spokeswoman for AMR.
Their contract expires July 1, 2000.
Under state law, counties, not individual cities, are responsible for the structure and design of local emergency medical service systems.
AMR is the largest ambulance provider in the United States and is in 36 states, said Bob Zuckswert, vice president with AMR. They are in 28 of the 56 counties in California, he said.
Zuckswert said he expected there would be other companies bidding on the service for Santa Clara County, including Rural Metro, the second largest EMS provider in the country.
During a day in Los Altos, Roderick and Lee respond to about four to six calls on a 12-hour shift.
"They don't get to come to quarters very often" at the Almond Avenue station in Los Altos, said fire Capt. Monique Vandenberg. "They hardly get a chance to sit down and eat. We've tried to invite them for dinner."
Currently Santa Clara County receives about 72,000 calls, 50,000 of which require transport, Zuckswert said. Of those, only 5 percent - 2,500 - are critical, he said.
It costs $440 for AMR to "run a call," said Wayne Davis, AMR director of operations for Santa Clara County.