County staff: three proposals received for EMS system assessment; timeline is tight for 2026 ambulance contract

Clark County contract administrator Diane Cortes told the EMS District 2 Board that the county issued a request for proposals for an EMS system assessment on Dec. 11 and received three responsive proposals from 10 plan holders after a Jan. 8 deadline.

"So, as you may have remembered, we issued a request for proposal for an EMS assessment that was released on December 11th. It was due back on January 8th at 1:30. So that was last Wednesday. The plan holders list had 10 different companies that it was sent to, and we received 3 responsive proposals," Cortes said.

Cortes said a work group that includes external reviewers is meeting immediately after the board meeting to review and score proposals. She said the county’s intended timeline is ambitious: selection and contract negotiation were planned to begin soon, with a consultant kickoff meeting and an assessment completed between kickoff and the end of March. The consultant was expected to advise on key policy decisions that would affect the board and to help prepare an ambulance RFP and participate in contract negotiations for an ambulance operator with an intended service start date of Jan. 1, 2026.

"This is a very robust and aggressive timeline," Cortes said. She added that technical difficulties in sharing proposals with external evaluators may require a brief extension of the review schedule; the county intends to pursue whether the timeline can be softened.

Board members asked whether the timeline in a slide that shows May through the end of July for an open RFP was standard or shortened. Cortes said she did not know the answer offhand and would follow up. "That is a really great great question, and I apologize. I actually don't know the answer to that. I'm gonna guess because I did have some input from some subject matter experts. I'm gonna guess that's a pretty standard timeline for that, But I can get back to you," Cortes said.

The board noted that the work group had asked the county to consider an extension because the current timeline is tight given the contract expiration and the intended Jan. 1, 2026 start date for a successor ambulance contract. No formal decision to extend was made at the meeting; staff said they would raise the extension request with county procurement and report back.

Cortes also described the consultant deliverables included in the RFP: a system assessment with recommendations for policy decisions affecting the district, support in drafting an ambulance RFP if that direction is chosen, and participation in ambulance contract negotiations. The board did not take formal action on contracting at this meeting; members expected the work group to return a recommendation when scoring and evaluation were complete.

Actions coming out of the update include the work group’s continued scoring of proposals, county staff attempting contract negotiations and selection as soon as evaluations allow, and staff following up on a possible short extension to the evaluation/selection timeline.