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Fire Division wants to create ambulance privatization policy
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Posted on Dec 15 2008
The Department of Public Safety’s Fire Division wants to be the agency that will create the policy relating to the privatization of ambulance services, instead of the Department of Public Health.
Committee on Health, Education, and Welfare chair Rep. Ralph DLG. Torres said yesterday that the original bill gives DPH the authority to draft the policy with respect to the ambulance services’ privatization.
Torres said they are amending a provision of the bill to allow the DPS Fire Division to make the policy because its emergency management technicians who will work with firefighters and the police officers.
“Ambulance falls under the Fire Division. When you call 911, it is the Fire Division that assists the patients and brings them to Public Health,” he said. “Once the Fire Division brings a patient in an ambulance to Public Health, its service ends there.”
“So that’s why the EMS and the Fire Division are requesting that they create the policy relating to the privatization of ambulance services, not Public Health because Public Health does not handle the Fire Division and the ambulance.”
Torres said he met with Fire Division chief Juan Wabol and some of the staff, who are agreeable to the privatization of ambulance services.
“They said they like the privatization of ambulance services. It’s just that they have to regulate the policy to make sure that it’s same with their own ambulance regulations,” the lawmaker said.
He said if DPH handles the privatization policy of ambulance services, it may differ from the Fire Division’s regulations.
“Since Fire Department handles the ambulance section they would like to do the policy to synchronize it with the policy. It’s okay with DPH,” Torres said.
