§ 26-27. Purpose and intent.

(a)

It is the purpose of this article to establish a regulated ambulance service system that can provide each ambulance patient with the best possible chance of survival without disability or preventable complication. This system shall be established for the city or in conjunction with the execution of an interlocal agreement for an area including the geographic area governed by all governmental entities party to the agreement.

(b)

Through the adoption of this article, it is intended that an emergency medical services provider be competitively selected as the sole provider of emergency and nonemergency medical transport for the following reasons:

(1)

It is unreasonable to have unnecessarily high rates and/or public subsidy to make needed improvements to ambulance service in the city when a more efficient system design could achieve the same results;

(2)

The most efficient design to achieve the goals of high-quality service, at the lowest cost consistent with such quality, and performance security in a contractor default, is the implementation of the system described in this article;

(3)

Competition which will benefit the consumer of ambulance services is regular competition through a competitive bid process for the market rather than street-level competition;

(4)

Street-level competition has been shown to inevitably result in the establishment of a two-tiered system of emergency ambulances and so-called nonemergency ambulances, which misdirects resources to the more lucrative nonemergency sector, so as to make the burden of taxpayer subsidy inevitable, while simultaneously reducing the quality of patient care and the system's disaster readiness; and

(5)

More effective system performance will be achieved through the selection of a private operator through competitive bids than through governmental operation.

(Code 1984, § 13-20)