The City of St. Albert is getting set to go back to the bargaining table with the provincial government over ambulance service.
On Monday, St. Albert city council gave the city manager the authorization to negotiate with Alberta Health Services on a new five-year contract for the provision of ambulance service in St. Albert, with options that could extend it another four years.
St. Albert Fire Services chief Ray Richards called the past three years, during which the city has provided ambulance service on behalf of the province on a cost-recovery basis, a “positive experience,” but there are a few areas that need to be tweaked.
“We know from reading the documents there will be substantially more reporting requirements,” he said, noting that six or eight reports must be filed each quarter now, compared to one or two before. “With the knowledge and experience of the last three years of working with Alberta Health Services, we’re confident we’ll be successful in the future negotiations.”
Over the course of the current three-year contract, the city has seen several cost increases in providing emergency medical services, but staff were confident any future increases could be built into the new contract.
“I think that’s going to be the challenge for us,” Richards said. “The initial five-year contract, it’s going to have to be both accurate but futuristic.”
“We’ll have to do some crystal balling to do some estimating as to what we would anticipate those price escalations would be,” added general manager of community and protective services Chris Jardine. “We would put that in our proposal, and if Alberta Health Services accepts that, then we have some certainty on what we’re going to be seeing.”
Some councillors also wondered aloud if response time standards would be built into the new contract, but Richards said the indication is that there will be no response time criteria. He said the criteria are going to focus more on patient care and ambulance performance.
Despite some of the issues, though, city staff were confident a deal could be worked out that is in the best interests of the city, AHS and the residents of St. Albert.
“At the end of the day, we’re all supposed to be in this together,” Jardine said.
Richards said that AHS has a period of 17 weeks to conclude negotiations with 33 service providers across the province, so they hope to have the new contract ready for ratification by early January 2012. The city’s current agreement with the province expires March 31, 2012.
