This past summer I blogged about Rural Metro failing to meet a bond payment and having some issues with an ambulance service contract in California. They subsequently filed for bankruptcy and are in the process of negotiating with their creditors. This is important- because they’re a big provider of 9-1-1 and hospital to hospital ambulance service in Arizona and we’re in charge of approving ambulance services operations in Arizona. You can read more about it in these two blogs (August 5 and September 9).
We’re also concerned because Rural Metro wasn’t meeting their response times in 5 different service areas in AZ (called CONs) over the summer… so we opened up an investigation. Late last week they responded to our investigation by sending us response reports and the raw data. Our investigation will likely take a while, so we also asked them to provide us with month by month response time data for each of the CONs. We received that information this week and are looking at it right now.
While we can’t draw definitive conclusions from a couple month’s response time data, it does appear that that their response times have marginally improved. We’ll continue to actively monitor their performance during the bankruptcy process. By being proactive, we’ll be able to identify early signs of performance slippage and intervene before the system is at risk
In regard to Rural Metro response times, have you looked at the situation in the northeast mesa county islands? Our neighborhood is on Mcdowell rd. between Power rd. and Ellsworth rd. The closest Rural Metro location is at Main St. and Sossaman Rd., at least 7 to 8 miles away. Their response time is close to 20 minutes, while I see in your article in the Arizona Republic of 10-04-2013 that the required time is 8 minutes 59 seconds. The sad part of this is there is a City of Mesa fire station 2 blocks from our house, but they cannot respond since Rural Metro has the franchise for this area.
I would love to be able to use this facility even at a yearly cost. Our neighborhood has lost too much property and lives living with this situation.
Thank you for your consideration.
Paul Waer