Falck pledges to maintain current services in county | News, Sports, Jobs

An American Medical Response ambulance travels on the road in West Maui last month. The Maui County Council is considering a resolution to urge the state Department of Health to continue its contract with AMR. The Maui News / MATTHEW THAYER photo

Advance life support services will be maintained for Maui County’s ambulances and Falck, a global healthcare and emergency services company, says if anything they will try “to improve it.”

Doug Chin, an attorney for Falck, assured the Maui County Council Friday, that Falck Northwest Corp, which had been chosen by the state Department of Health to provide ambulance transport for Maui County will not stray from services currently being provided when it is scheduled to start its contract on Dec. 28 and ends June 30, 2027. Falck also has a similar contract for Kauai County.

Chin also acknowledged that a bid protest for the contract is underway and that they are respecting the process. The protest was filed Sept. 5 by the current contract holders, American Medical Response, the state Department of Health has said.

On Friday, the Maui County Council referred a resolution urging the health department to instead continue the contract with AMR to the Water Authority, Social Services and Parks Committee for more discussion.

The resolution points to issues raised by the Maui County Paramedics Association and the Kauai Paramedics Association regarding that the state has set no minimum level of advanced life support unit coverage in its requests for contract proposals for Maui County and Kauai.

Maui County’s system is designed as a 100 percent advanced life support system, but the unions worry that under the new contracts, there will no longer be a guarantee that an advanced life support unit will respond to emergencies. When the unions made their concerns public earlier this month said they had not taken a position on the awarding of the contracts.

AMR’s standard has been for ambulances to carry at least one paramedic and be able to provide advanced-life support, which proved critical in their response to the Aug. 8 wildfires, the council’s resolution says.

In response to a question by Council Vice Chairwoman Yuki Lei Sugimura over concerns of hearing advanced life support services could decline, Chin said: “That might have been what the RFP said, that might have been how the Department of Health characterized it, as Falck is concerned, Falck will and is committed to maintaining current staffing levels for all ALS ambulances so we are not changing the ALS service, in fact if anything we are trying to improve it.”

Chin, a former attorney general for Hawaii, said earlier in his testimony to the council that if the DOH executes a contract with Falck, the company “will welcome all members of the union who want to come over.”

He said their seniority will be recognized and that Falck will abide by the current union contract.

Current AMR staff also testified and thanked the council for the resolution.

One of them was Candace Lahm, operations supervisor for AMR in Maui County, who said she has watched their system grow and “our paramedics work hard and care for your people.”

She added that the AMR staff are all part of Maui’s community as well.

“It means a lot to us we continue on here,” said Lahm who has spent 41 years in the emergency medical services field.

When asked by Council member Tasha Kama, if Lahm would seek out employment from Falck, Lahm said: “I can’t speak for everybody and you know, I can only speak for myself, but ‘no,’ I would not. We have a really good reputation with you here in the county, things I have been reading of other companies, maybe not as much. EMS is my life. Two-thirds of my life I have spent doing this and to see our system potentially go down a bit, it really is disheartening for me.”

Lahm also said: “I was around years and years ago when we had another company that had bid against us, won the bid and ultimately defaulted because they didn’t have enough people to work for them. So I’ve been through all of this before, it’s heartbreaking, it tears apart our system, and our family and that’s what we are here with AMR, its a family.”

Hana resident Mary Kahana questioned how a selection of a new provider could be made without input from the Hana community, which is far from medical care in life threatening emergencies.

Kahana, who is also a retired U.S. Air Force flight nurse said she is familiar with the AMR capabilities in East Maui and said they are fully equipped for life threatening emergencies.

“We are not broken here in Hana to my knowledge so why fix something that is not broken?”

She acknowledged that Chin had said Falck would like to hire current AMR staff, but she questioned if Falck would also buy AMR’s equipment on Maui.

* Staff Writer Melissa Tanji can be reached at mtanji@mauinews.com.

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