Mission council hears EMS operations review as city nears break-even for ambulance service

Tim Brown, chair of Mission’s EMS oversight, told the City Council on Oct. 14 that the city-operated ambulance service “is doing extremely well.” The quarter- and year-long financial and operations review presented to the council showed Mission EMS billed about $9 million over the year, collected roughly $2.5 million (about 27 percent), and ran a deficit of about $24,815 for the period analyzed.

The presentation included both an operations summary from Tim Brown and a separate management cost and labor analysis by a consultant, who reviewed payroll, operating costs and responder hours. The consultant reported that total EMS expenses were about $2.4 million and payroll and fringe benefits accounted for roughly 80–83 percent of EMS costs. “If we didn’t transport anyone, we would already incur $361,099” in fixed costs, the consultant said when explaining the breakeven analysis. The consultant added that Mission recorded 50,215 responder hours during the fiscal year and calculated a break-even point of about 53,895 responder hours.

Why it matters: council members and staff said the near‑break even result contrasts with prior…