Travis County Commissioners Court
September 22, 2009,
Item 38
>> this item is real quick.
not mr.
derryberry, 38 consider and take appropriate action on interlocal agreement between the city of Austin and Travis County for emergency medical services is 38.
>> thanks you very much.
this particular agreement has taken a long time to negotiate based on the various elements that came up during the year.
i'll just highlight those for you, but this is an agreement that's been going on for quite some time between Travis County and the city of Austin and this is simply allowing transport emergency medical services for ground transport as well as starflight.
and one of the unique situations this year, if you remember, is that we actually brought travis -- starflight over to the county.
and as before we had two interlocals, we now just simply have the one ground interlocal.
so what we had to do was to continue the transition of starflight, not only bringing all the people over, which you've already approved and done all that, but we also had to make sure that we protected the operational needs of starflight that still exist in the ground interlocal.
and that is dispatching, for instance, collections, medical supplies.
now, some of that we determined based upon our negotiations this year a we are going to continue to try to transition to the county.
however, the one that I don't anticipate doing any time soon or at least this next year is dispatching.
we still need to do that and that's at c-tec and that's handle understand a very good manner.
but what we did is we simply implemented those particular needs this the ground interlocal and so you see that.
the other thing that you see is that we established last year that it was good for starflight on to have its own medical director.
and so in the ground agreement that we've had previously, it basically stated that there was an e.m.s.
medical director.
and so we needed to make that change in this agreement is that we now have a separate -- and you'll see that in the basic agreement -- we now have a separate e.m.s.
director and a separate starflight director, medical director.
now, why is that important?
is because the starflight medical director has experience in air medical.
and that's what you want to have.
and so we are very pleased with the doctor that we have, dr.
james kempema, I think you've met him, and we are pleased with our ground e.m.s.
director, dr.
paul henchy, and he also has air medical background.
we're going to benefit greatly by having him with us.
the other elements of the agreement that you see that really spent probably most of the time toward the last four months had to do with how we're going to deal with accidents that occur with our ambulances, with our vehicles.
and we had an oddball, odd situation that occurred that created that.
and so a bunch of us worked on it initially and you'll see those in 10.2 and 11.4 of the basic agreement, is how are we going to handle better the custody and care of our county vehicles of which city employees drive and operate.
and so I have to commend -- I don't know if he's here, yes, he is, dan mansur, our August manager, because what really resolved it was the two risk managers, and also commend the one with the city of where we let them take care of it to where they actually developed the language because we just weren't doing too good at that.
and so I do commend him for that, and they did agree and I think we now have a stronger, better policy in regards to care and custody of county vehicles.
we also made a few adjustments in regards to performance measures.
we want to be able to look more as response time for the county and so we have two additional ones that we think will give us added information that will help us better determine our needs in the county of how we can better serve our residents.
and so we've asked for that and it's in there.
we also made some discoveries this year that was part of the negotiations of really looking at the budget in a different way.
and that is instead of just looking at dollars, let's look at performance and let's look at what we are getting for the money, and that is it a service driven agreement.
and so you are going to see this next career of where we're going to be asking for aal la cart menu to where we break out all of those services provisions in the agreement to where we can better, I think, meet the needs of our citizens.
it's still jumbled up a bit and I think we need to continue to separate that out.
this study that I've asked for in the fiscal year 10 budget is going to be a great asset for you as well as for us in the operational areas because that will then look at best practices for what we need to be doing in regards to both ground and air.
now, some people look at that as a threat, but I look at it as an enhancement and as something that will really help us better serve our citizens.
as you know, court, I'm now working with the small cities, with the spelded sd degrees and the city of Austin and well as the Austin medical director as well as the hospitals in trying to bring all of those pieces together so we can better serve our residents by using each one as a resource for the betterment of medical provision.
i'm talking too much, I know.
but this e.m.s.
agreement is, of course, at the last hour, and the city council actually has it on their agenda for Thursday.
i wish to commend the audit office because they've been working on all the numbers to try to make sure with my financial person, they've asked some very tough questions of things in the agreement so I appreciate those questions, and I'll be responding more to them and helping them have a better understanding of some of the things that are unique about this particular agreement.
but I present it to you today in hopes that you would go ahead and approve this, realizing that there's still much work to be done in future agreements, but at least we got to this point and I'm tired and exhausted and ready for y'all to sign it.
>> I commend you on all of the work that's been done.
i guess there's only one other and I guess maybe this is one of the issues that y'all will be talking about, and that is the response time.
and to see how close we can get to being there as soon as possible.
and out in the county as we are in the city.
so is that an issue that you'll also be working on?
>> that's a big issue and that's what we're centering on.
we're looking at the greatest need we have and that has to be for us response time.
and then what -- how can we utilize our resources better, because we know times are tough for you, we know times are tough for our residents.
that's the one reason we're bringing in all those parties is -- manor is a good example.
we met two weeks ago and jose and I just had a conversation about the tackett that there's an ambulance -- about the fact there's an ambulance at the city station but it's on the outer edge -- right on the county edge and it zips into manor.
now what we're finding through our studies is we really need to move that ambulance further east so we can address those needs.
>> it's definitely still an issue.
>> it's still a big issue, Commissioner.
>> and the e.s.d.s realize that.
at one point they were even thinking about going into the avenue of constructing a facility to make sure that they get a location, because really they really needed something to house the actual ground unit.
and that was part of the issue and so that -- they are still confronted with that of housing the ground unit so they will be able to have even a quicker response time.
>> I'm happy to announce that two weeks ago we had a big pow-wow to test whether or not we had actually brought all these people together for a good reason, and we met with the city administrator, we met with the Commissioner of the e.s.d., the fire chief, the city of Austin e.m.s.
department.
we met with the Austin medical director.
and within 30 minutes we had a location.
and in the city participating in giving us a site right across from the fire station.
>> good.
>> so I'll have an m.o.u.
coming to you, jose, you will get it.
we'll have an m.o.u.
coming to you which will actually then prove that all this is working and that is we're not just saying -- I mean my silo, I'm going to have to do it my way and you're not involved in it.
i don't want to be a part of it.
they all came to the table and we're all going to make that happen to we're going to do that in your area, Commissioner Gomez, we're working on your area next.
>> that's good news.
>> does the auditor still have issues with this or --.
>> just a small issue.
the last contract we haven't been able to verify the funding, but I know it's in the works.
we talked to staff so just to let you know that we haven't been able to do that part yet.
but it should be coming in the next couple hours.
>> then should the emotion be approval contingent on identification of funding?
>> that would be great.
>> second.
>> I'll second that motion.
>> it's already seconded.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> let's see if we can deal with one quick item here.
on that financial incentives item, we probably need to call it up at 1:45, 2:00.
sorry about that.
miss wilson.
>> since you made that motion contingent on identification of funding, it would be appropriate for the auditor's office to provide a memo to the court that could be put in the record that the funding had been found so there wouldn't be a future question about whether the contingency had been met.
>> okay.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 1:30 PM
