Moses Lake council postpones EMS presentation

MOSES LAKE — A presentation by owners of Lifeline Ambulance to the Moses Lake City Council scheduled for tonight’s council meeting has been postponed. Mayor Dustin Swartz said Monday he didn’t know when it might be rescheduled.

“(Lifeline representatives) have met and had conversations with staff,” Swartz said.

Company representatives also have met with Swartz, he said, but the meetings have been discussions only. 

“There have been no negotiations,” he said.

Lifeline, based in Wenatchee, currently provides EMS in Ephrata, Soap Lake, Warden, a small area around Quincy but outside the boundaries of Grant County Fire District 3 and rural areas around the city of Moses Lake. The Moses Lake Fire Department provides EMS within the city limits. Lifeline began working in Grant County in July 2023, after the owners of American Medical Response decided to end their operations in the county. 

Lifeline has a station on Arlington Drive north of Moses Lake.

The Moses Lake Fire Department has about 47 employees. Garrett Fletcher, president of Moses Lake Firefighters IAFF Local 1258, said all of its firefighters work as EMS too.

“You show up to work on your first day at Moses Lake Fire, you are a firefighter EMT or a firefighter paramedic,” Fletcher said. “Which means that when the tones go off and it is a fire and you’re on the ambulance that day, you’re going to that fire and you’re going to fight fire.”

Under existing MLFD procedure, crews assigned to a fire engine also respond to medical calls when necessary, Fletcher said.

“If there’s a (medical) call that is critical enough that you need more people, then you would call the engine and the engine would respond, and you would have firefighters, EMTs, on the engine. Every member, whether it is paid for through the fire department or the ambulance department, is a firefighter and (also) an EMT or a paramedic,” Fletcher said.

Although all MLFD personnel are trained for both roles and operate out of the same fire stations, the city allocates the services provided to the fire department and a separate ambulance department. In the case of an incident that required both a fire engine and ambulance, the accounting would be split between the two. 

Residents and businesses pay an ambulance fee. 

“The fee was enacted as a stable funding mechanism to ensure adequate levels of emergency response vehicles and trained personnel are available to respond within the city,” wrote MLFD Chief Brett Bastian in a letter explaining how the ambulance service is funded. 

City officials also allocate insurance co-pays collected from patients to the ambulance department. 

The city started providing ambulance services in 2001.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.