Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Sunday, June 24, 2007

Richard Mial: Both sides are frustrating on La Crosse ambulance issue

By RICHARD MIAL / La Crosse Tribune

The city of La Crosse’s proposal to get into the ambulance business is one of the most frustrating issues I’ve ever seen.

Mayor Mark Johnsrud and Fire Chief Gregg Cleveland have made a vague proposal that the city should somehow get into the ambulance business in order to help improve the quality of the existing system.

Yet there is no formal plan, and when you ask the city specific questions, its officials say that they are just exploring ways to make things better.

Meanwhile, representatives from Tri-State Ambulance held a community forum on emergency service issues during which one speaker criticized the city, the firefighters union and public employee pay. That’s not exactly conducive to good relations between the two sides.

Unfortunately, while the two sides bicker, real lives are at stake. If the city actually takes over ambulance service within city limits, would it degrade existing regional service outside the city?

Without the revenue from city ambulance calls, Tri-State Ambulance, the private service owned by Gundersen Lutheran, might not be able to afford to provide the same level of service it now provides.

The last time there were two ambulance services in La Crosse County, Tri-State alone was able to offer paramedic service to most urban areas, while the other ambulance service offered only lower-level emergency medical technician service to suburban and rural communities.

If the city of La Crosse took over ambulance service within city limits, would that create the same service discrepancies that existed when we had two ambulance services in the past?

The current system is supported by users, not taxpayers. Would that change?

I feel strongly about ambulance service in part because one fall day in 2001, I had to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital with chest pains.

The Fire Department was the first to arrive, and the firefighters were reassuring and competent. As first responders, they got me ready for transport. Moments later, Tri-State arrived. Its paramedics started an IV, administered medicine to keep my vessels open, communicated with hospital staff and transported me to the hospital.

Everyone had a clear role. Everyone worked together. And, because Tri-State offers paramedic service to its entire service area of several counties, I got the best care I could get before I got to the hospital.

If we start fracturing the system by taking the most populated area and breaking it out as a separate service area, will we still have the same high-quality, regional care at no taxpayer expense that we have now?

Don’t ask me. The city doesn’t have answers to those kinds of questions, because there isn’t a plan yet, only the desire to somehow “improve” the existing system.

Meanwhile, Tri-State is not without reproach in this debate. It held a community forum on Wednesday, during which a representative of a Nebraska ambulance company that went out of business after a city-takeover of ambulance service blamed firefighter unions for costing more money than private-sector services.

On another issue, he said, “Shame on you, city of La Crosse” for not agreeing to an emergency medical dispatch proposal made by Tri-State.

I worry about the impact on the skilled and talented fire and ambulance crews if the management of both services continues to argue with each other. This is not the way we should go about making important life-and-death decisions about emergency medical care and transport.

City officials need to start answering the hard questions now. And Tri-State should never again bring in outside people to criticize local firefighter pay and their unions.

Contact Opinion page editor Richard Mial at (608) 791-8232 or rmial@lacrossetribune.com.