§ 111. Ambulance response time performance required.

A.

EMSA's operations contractor shall employ sufficient personnel, acquire sufficient equipment and manage its resources as necessary to achieve the following response time standards on all emergency and routine transports originating within the regulated service area.

1.

Response time standards for the eastern division beneficiary member jurisdiction and combined western division beneficiary and non-beneficiary member jurisdictions. On the effective date of this code, subject to the exemptions set forth in Section 111, Subsection C. below, the following standards of response time reliability shall be applicable to all patient transports originating from within the eastern division beneficiary member jurisdiction and the combined western division beneficiary and non-beneficiary jurisdiction of the regulated service area:

Priority 1 Standard .....	90% reliability or better
Priority 2 Standard .....	90% reliability or better
Priority 3 Standard .....	90% reliability or better
Priority 4 Standard .....	90% reliability or better

 

2.

Response time standards for the non-beneficiary member jurisdictions of the eastern division. On the effective date of this code, subject only to the exemptions set forth in Section 111, Subsection C., below, the following standards of response time reliability shall be applicable to all patient transports originating within a non-beneficiary member jurisdiction in the eastern division:

Priority 1 and 2 Standard .....	75% minimum during each month in each individual non-beneficiary member jurisdiction for Priority 1 and Priority 2 transports combined, and a 90% minimum during each month for combined Priority 1 and Priority 2 transports within the combined non-beneficiary jurisdictions.
Priority 3 Standard .....	90% reliability or better during each month
Priority 4 Standard .....	90% reliability or better during each month

 

B.

Three (3) sub-areas will be defined by EMSA in the area comprising the eastern division beneficiary jurisdiction and three (3) in the area comprising the combined beneficiary and non-beneficiary jurisdictions of the western division for compliance measurement for Priority 1 transports. The operations contractor shall use best efforts to ensure response time equity for Priority 1 transports among sub-areas, keeping response times in each sub-area within fifteen (15) percent of the compliance required for the entire jurisdiction. Variations of more than fifteen (15) percent from the jurisdiction standards within the same sub-area for more than three (3) consecutive months, or more than six (6) months during any twelve-month period, shall be considered chronic response time discrimination. Provided, however, that in the event the volume of Priority 1 transports in any sub-area during any month is less than one hundred (100), sufficient additional Priority 1 transports shall be added from that sub-area, in sequential order from one (1) or more months immediately preceding, to that month's sub-area statistics so that the total volume of Priority 1 transports included in the calculation is one hundred (100).

C.

Response time exceptions. The contractor shall maintain mechanisms for reserve production capacity to increase production should a temporary system overload persist. However, it is understood that from time to time unusual factors beyond the contractor's reasonable control affect the achievement of specified response time standards. These unusual factors are limited to severe weather conditions as verified by third-party weather source, declared disasters, or periods of unusually high demand for emergency services. High demand is defined as those periods when there are a greater quantity of simultaneous emergency and unmodifiable non-emergency ambulance requests, which is defined as the ninety-eighth percentile of demand for day-of-the-week and hour of day of the immediately previous fifty-two-week period (rolling fifty-two-week period). An "unmodifiable non-emergency ambulance request" is a call where the ambulance has arrived on scene and therefore is engaged in patient care, thus eliminating the ability to divert that unit to a higher priority case, and therefore included as simultaneous demand for the purpose of calculating high demand. Equipment failure, traffic congestion, ambulance failure, dispatch error, or other causes shall not be grounds for granting an exception to compliance with the response time standard.

(Ord. Nos. 17294, 19167; Ord. No. 22973, § 2, 10-24-2013)