Stanislaus County will seek competitive proposals from ambulance providers for the county’s exclusive response zones, and that could change the landscape of emergency medical response for years.
The ambulance company with the winning bid will be expected to partner with city and rural fire departments, which often arrive at the scenes of medical emergencies and start treatment for patients before an ambulance arrives.
Shorter response times and better patient outcomes are the goals of what officials are calling a high-performance, integrated response system, which places more emphasis on fire-service contributions and is similar to systems in San Mateo, Santa Barbara and other counties.
The Mountain-Valley Emergency Medical Services Agency, which regulates ambulance service in the county, expects to release a request for proposals this month and new agreements with ambulance providers will begin Jan. 1, 2020.
The competition could shake up the ambulance business, as American Medical Response for years has been the ambulance provider in the exclusive zones of Modesto-Salida-Empire, Ceres-Keyes and Turlock-Denair.