Town Settles with Ambulance Provider
NEWINGTON - A year-long discussion regarding ambulance response times has been closed with a $100,000 settlement-about half of the fines reportedly owed by American Medical Response (AMR) ambulance services for emergency arrivals that did not meet the standards of their contract with the town.

       The Town Council approved the settlement resolution at its August 9 regular meeting.

       â€"I’m glad we finally reached a settlement on the issue,” said Mayor Roy Zartarian after a Planning and Zoning meeting the next night. â€"We’ve eliminated the need for litigation.”

       The issue of response times-AMR’s agreement with the town calls for ambulance services to arrive at the scene of an emergency incident within 9 minutes-came up publicly last summer, but AMR has been contesting the fines for four years.

       The contract also requires that first responders reach the scene within 15 minutes for non-emergency matters.

       A $250 fine is imposed in the event of a response time that exceeds those standards, but records provided last year by then-Town Manager John Salomone included instances where $500 was charged.

       While the records to that point showed an accumulative $100,000 in fines, the amount as of this April had reached $200,000.

       â€"If we were to litigate it, it would have cost us that much,” said Councilor Maureen Klett over the phone. â€"We took a loss, but we’re still getting a large sum of money [back].”

       â€"Probably even more,” Zartarian said. â€"It would have gone into six figures for sure.”

       Anthony Palermino, an attorney representing the town in the matter, estimates that a discovery phase would have taken up to two years to complete. Then they would have had to reexamine the circumstances of each individual case in which the service arrived late.

       â€"You’re talking about having to prove these items one by one by one,” Palermino said.

       As for the response times, those have improved, with responders reaching the scene within the mandated window around 90 percent of the time, according to Klett.

       The change can be attributed largely to the company adding a vehicle dedicated specifically to covering Newington, she said.

       The service’s lowest on-time arrival rate was around 83 percent, according to Palermino.

       Representatives with AMR could not be reached for comment.

       Newington Emergency Medical Services, (NEMS) an all-volunteer organization, operates in partnership with AMR under the agreement, but has been pushing to become independent.

       Currently, NEMS covers Monday through Friday, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., while AMR takes 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. NEMS is on duty for 24 hours on weekends and major holidays. Last summer, the two were in the process of restructuring the agreement so that NEMS covers all shifts-a discussion that prompted the Town Council to approve a one-year extension of its contract with them that June.

       Last year, both the Emergency Medical Services Committee-of no affiliation with NEMS or AMR-and NEMS Assistant Chief Laura Bramucci contended that responders have never received complaints from the community regarding response times.

       EMS Committee Chair Scott Woods described pinpointing a universal response time standard as a moving target, saying that there is a debate as to whether the 1 to 2 minutes it takes a dispatcher to receive and forward a call should be added to the response time.

      
STORY BY MARK DIPAOLA   |  Aug 17 2016  |  COMMENTS?