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County hears AMR report as ambulance contract comes up for renewal
Summary
Representatives from AMR and its parent company summarized February call volumes, stationing and options for a contract renewal due in December; commissioners asked for more community input and a follow-up review meeting.
Representatives of AMR gave the Linn County Board of Commissioners a monthly operations update and said the county’s ambulance contract, historically renewed on five-year terms, comes up for renewal in December.
Dawn Brooks, identified in the meeting as an AMR representative, opened the report with February call and transport figures. She said Pleasanton had 32 calls with 24 transports and Mound City 24 calls with 13 transports; across listed towns the company recorded 121 calls and 65 transports in February. Jason Jenkins, regional director for AMR’s parent company GMR, told the commissioners he first began working with Linn County in 2013 and that the county’s contracts typically run five years.
Jenkins said the county has historically been the only bidder on the service contract and outlined options for renewal language, including adding an annual consumer-price-index adjustment so any increase would be predictable and align with the county’s budget cycle. He said AMR’s finance team was reviewing pricing but he did not expect large changes if current staffing and stationing remain the same.
Commissioners asked for more detail on response times and community needs. Lewis Loy, the Centerville supervisor on shift, described local deployment practices: supervisors respond to provide advanced life support until a transporting ambulance arrives and noted that, depending on location and call load, transport ambulance response can be longer in parts of District 3. Jenkins and Dawn Brooks said the county’s configuration — stations in Centerville, Pleasanton and other towns — generally yields adequate coverage and that the system includes helicopter dispatch for time-critical cases because there is no local hospital.
Commissioners asked AMR to collect input from field crews about service needs and to return with station-level feedback. The board and AMR tentatively set a follow-up discussion for April 14 to gather comments from individual stations and to review any recommended changes before the formal contract process later this year.
No formal action was taken at this meeting on the contract; commissioners discussed options and asked staff and AMR to prepare additional operational detail for future consideration.
