City adds $500 lift-assist fee for assisted-living non-emergencies

The Johnston City Council on Tuesday approved Resolution 25-231 to add a $500 lift-assist fee to the Johnson Grimes Metropolitan Fire District schedule of fees for calls to assisted-living facilities, nursing homes and memory-care facilities.

Fire leadership presented the request, telling the council that the proposed fee applies when dispatch determines a call is non-emergent through its ProQA triage questions and no medical complaint or injury is reported. The fire chief said such responses require advanced life-support personnel and apparatus, which take those resources out of service and can increase overtime costs and injury risk to responders.

"When advanced life-support resources are responding to these non-emergent calls for service, they effectively are out of service, unavailable to respond to true emergencies in our community," the chief said. The chief said the fee is intended to change facility behavior by encouraging those facilities to use their own staff and lifting equipment for non-medical assistance.

The chief and staff noted an important exception: if the responding crew performs a patient assessment and determines vital signs or other medically necessary care is required, the incident converts to a patient care response and the lift-assist fee would not apply.

Council members asked questions about the scope and data supporting the fee; staff provided a document summarizing affected facilities, call history and incident types and said many calls were recorded as falls or low-acuity assistance. After discussion, the council approved the resolution. Recorded affirmative votes included Council members Burkhart, Cope, Evans, Martin and Ready.

Staff said, if implemented, Johnston would be the third city in the metro area with a comparable lift-assist fee. The council did not identify additional exemptions beyond the medical-assessment exception discussed in the presentation.