The king is dead! Long live the king!
When Bryan Gibson, CEO of Priority EMS, the parent company of Augusta’s new ambulance service, Central EMS, started speaking to members of a local subcommittee appointed to help design Central’s operations in the Garden City, it was déjà vu all over again.
Opinion
I could have closed my eyes and thought he worked for the city’s current but soon-to-be-exiled ambulance service provider Gold Cross and had come before Augusta commissioners seeking a contract and more money. I mean he said exactly the same things Gold Cross’s then-Vice President Steven Vincent said repeatedly about the escalating costs of doing business, as well as how ambulance drivers had to stay with patients they’d transported to the hospital until hospital staff checked them in, which sidelined the driver and ambulance, sometimes for hours.
But when Gibson said those very same things, it was more like a warning instead of a request.
“I want the public to understand everything we touch is costing more money,” Gibson said. “Everything. Prices go up. Insurance, fuel. It costs more money related to the hourly wages and benefits packages. It all costs more money. On top of that, we’re having what we call APOD – ambulance patient offload delays. It’s not the hospital’s fault. They’re having the same problems. They don’t have staff. They’re having problems moving patients.
“From the time the call is received to the time a call is finished it has been elongated. It is taking longer and longer and longer for us to do a trip. We need to figure out ways to shorten that task time.”
Gibson talked about the shortage of EMTs and paramedics, saying a recent nationwide survey showed that 67 percent of all EMS personnel, from EMTs to paramedics, were not returning to the field. Central is hosting a job fair Monday and Tuesday at the Hilton Garden Inn so it will be ready to take over ambulance service in Augusta by May 1. The state Department of Health designated Central as Augusta’s zone provider after Gold Cross gave up the zone because transporting so many indigent and nonpaying patients without an adequate city subsidy was a losing proposition.
Gibson and Central EMS President Gary Coker want the city to buy software that can give detailed data about ambulance calls. They also want the city’s 911 center to dispatch ambulances and share the Augusta Fire Department’s medical director as well as medical supplies.
Take a Load Off Our Fanny. And We Can Put a Load Right on You.
“The way we’re looking at this is, we’re not the dispatch center, the communications center in this,” Gibson said. “We looking for ya’ll to do this, assuming that’s what you would agree to. We want you to have control of all vehicles and staff.”
Currently, 911 rolls over ambulance calls to Gold Cross’ dispatch center.
“My choice would be that you’re controlling the assets,” Gibson continued. “You’re doing the posting. And you’re doing the dispatch. You’re handling that. And the reason I say that is, that’s one of our questions. That takes cost off us. Right? Let’s be transparent. . . . If not, then I’ve got to fill a whole com center. I’ve got to have redundant systems. And so, the more we can take advantage of what’s already in place and the expertise that’s already there and provide transparency at the same time, it’s win-win for us.”
It takes the cost off them, but how much is going to be put on Augusta? How many more 911 employees to dispatch 28,000 ambulance calls a year? How many more consoles will Augusta have to buy?
Another win-win for Central would be to be allowed to house ambulances in Augusta fire stations. How much cost would that take off them?
It seems to me his definition of what’s transparent is, “What’s good for me might not necessarily be good for you.” And his “win-win” is “I win twice.”
A myriad of subjects were discussed with the subcommittee, including having a consultant calculate a proposed subsidy based on available data, the number of ambulances and response times the city wants. Gibson and Coker have not proposed a cost to the city in the form of a subsidy, except to say they must net a 10 percent profit to satisfy their shareholders.
Interim City Administrator Takiyah Douse asked whether the method they were proposing for Augusta was used in contracting with other entities.
“No,” Gibson said. “Usually a county puts it out to bid and says, ‘We want x, y and z.’ And we say, ‘Here’s the price.’ And that’s how we typically do it. And I can do it here. Would be happy to do it. But I was just trying to help you understand the idea of where the money came from. This is more transparent.
“Most counties ask for a price, and they get it,” he continued. “Just like they’re bidding out roads or anything else. This is our attempt to be transparent. That’s all.”
“And we certainly do appreciate that,” said Procurement Director Geri Sams. “However, since your model is something you want to present to Augusta, it hasn’t been a proven success anyplace else for you to identify your costs. Would it be impractical for Augusta to ask you to present both models? “
“No, ma’am. I can do that. Be happy to,” Gibson said.
As a point of reference, in 2018, Central’s bid proposal to provide ambulance service in Augusta was for 12 to 14 ambulances for a subsidy of $3 million. The president’s current proposal was for the same number of ambulances, plus three QRVs, which require nine paramedics. So, imagine what Central’s bid will be now even without the cost of dispatching calls or paying rent for ambulance parking spaces.
The News in Brief
Questions Asked and Answered
Q: Why did the court appointed lawyer for former Augusta commissioner Sammie Sias file a motion for acquittal or a new trial?
A: So the attorney can keep getting paid, and Sammie, who was convicted last year in federal court for destroying government documents and lying about them to an FBI agent, can sleep on a blow-up mattress instead of a jail cot for a few more months.
Q: Who won the argument about whether the city’s 1996 contract with the Augusta Rowing Club called for the club to be responsible for repairs and upkeep of the entire Boathouse or only the space the club uses? Commissioner Stacey Pulliam and General Counsel Wayne Brown contended the rowing club was responsible for everything from the roof to the foundation. Commissioner Wayne Guilfoyle insisted the club was responsible only for their “defined area” outlined in a section of the contract that he read aloud at a meeting last week?
A: It was a draw as Senior Staff Attorney Samuel Meller stuck to his and Brown’s opinion and Guilfoyle stuck to his although Brown came to the podium to whisper something in Meller’s ear, after which they both moved away and sat down. But you can rest assured, no matter whose opinion is correct, the rowing club won’t be coming up with the $5.1 million to $5.8 million it’s estimated to cost to remove mold caused by water running from broken pipes for three days in the kitchen area unbeknownst to anybody and other major repairs.
Q: Who is taking responsibility for the IRS fining the city $2 million for not filing the annual papers related to Obama Care, aka The Affordable Care Act in 2017?
A: Nobody. And sooner or later everybody will forget about it.
Q: What landmarks in Augusta and Aiken draw foolish, distracted or drunk drivers like flies to crash into them?
A: In Augusta it’s the Olive Road bridge underpass, which has been struck at least 50 times in the past 50 years, the latest being this month when a U-Haul truck got stuck trying to go under it. It’s not that it isn’t well marked. A steel beam spanning the top is painted red and there are 25 other warning signs and devices. The bridge belongs to the railroad which won’t raise it because they’d have to raise the tracks for several miles each way. Besides, nobody tells the railroads what to do.
The other landmark that motorists keep crashing into is a brick wall on Whiskey Road at Coker Springs Road in Aiken. It was hit by a pickup truck driven by a drunk driver last week. It was hit twice in November, marking the fifth time in the past two years. The wall was built in 1928, and nobody crashed into it until recent years.
She Saw Halley’s Comet
When my grandmother Pearl was in her 80s, she started saying every special occasion would be her last. It would be her last Easter, her last Christmas, her last family reunion, the last wedding she would go to. Whatever the occasion, she’d say it was her last. And she was still saying it until she died when she was 97.
When I went to see her, we’d sit and hold hands and talk of times past, of fishing and her wading waist deep into the dark pond water to put her hook in exactly the right place near the stump. Her dress floating on the water like a lily pad. Or we’d talk about swimming in the Millpond and her going to sleep doing the Deadman’s Float. I’d ask her if she could still talk to the hoot owls in the river swamp.
“Whoo, whoo, whoo!” she’d call in the warm darkness of her front yard and then listen for an answering. “Whoo, whoo, whoo.”
One time, I asked her to tell me about her life so I could write it down.
She said she was born in 1893. Her first memory was of cradling a piece of stove wood in her two arms to bring into the house for the fireplace.
“It came a terrible snowstorm in 1895,” she said. “My granddaddy was out scraping ice off the mules’ backs and fell dead right there in the mule lot. The snow as so deep, the womenfolk wouldn’t go to the funeral. The men had to take him off and bury him.”
That was around Montezuma, Ga., near Andersonville prison. She told me about her daddy going to the prison when he was five years old and seeing stiff dead men piled on wagons. He remembered they were cooking oak leaves to feed the Yankee prisoners.
“They were boiling oak leaves in a big pot. They were perishing them to death. Just perishing them to death,” she said.
Her daddy stepped in the ashes of an Andersonville campfire and burned his foot.
When she was a girl, she and the other young people would walk to the railroad tracks to see the train pass by; then watch for Halley’s Comet to make its fiery sweep earthward. She said it looked like it was going to set the world afire.
“A lot of people were afraid, but I wasn’t,” she said.
Before I left, she said wistfully, “I can still float on my back in the Millpond. I can lie right up there and sleep so good when it’s warm, but the alligators have gotten so big they won’t let me do it anymore.”
Then she told me about her grandson in California telling his little grandson she’d never seen, “You’ve got a grandmother in Georgia who can lie on her back and float on top of the water and smoke a cigarette at the same time. She can even roll her own cigarette.”
“Don’t you say nothing about no cigarette,” she warned.
