After a 6-1 Evansville City Council vote approved an EMS takeover plan, questions remain about whether council members had enough information to make a confident decision.
Is it wise to bypass a true EMS feasibility study? Rushing ahead with uncertain projections could leave taxpayers footing the bill.
Evansville Fire Chief Tony Knight’s financial model rests on projected call volumes, but he never reached out to AMR, the city’s EMS provider for four decades, to verify the accuracy of those numbers. Without input from the only organization that has managed Evansville’s EMS call mix, it is difficult to see how the projections could fully reflect on-the-ground realities − such as canceled calls, patients declining transport, and uncompensated care…