State

Texas

City/County

Port Arthur

Position

City Council

Party

Democrat

Councilman Beard speaks on ambulance service

Port Arthur's city council heard proposals from three e-m-s providers during Tuesday's council session. Currently, Acadian is the only ambulance service taking emergency and non-emergency calls in Port Arthur. 

City leaders can decide to stay with Acadian, bring in Bay Star or Southeast Texas EMS or city leaders could decide a combination.  City Manager Steve Fitzgibbons says, having three emergency providers is not likely. 

For several years Port Arthur has had two emergency services, Stat-Care and Acadian.  However, Acadian purchased stat-care last month .  Now that Port Arthur is down to one ambulance service, city leaders decided to review e-m-s for its citizens.  Council member John Beard says, citizens should be part of the decision process.  "There are several issues we need to keep in mind, one, access and use of services, the number of ambulances and companies", said Beard.  "Too much competition, can be just as bad as not having any or not having enough resources.  Because of our industrial base, its quite important if there's a mass causality we have sufficient number of ambulances to handle not only that incident but our citizens and their needs." said Beard.

Acadian V.P of Operations, Mike Burney says, his company has the resources needed to be the only emergency provider for Port Arthur.   "We staff Port Arthur as a single provider, with more ambulances then there were when there 2 providers," said Burney.  City Council gave Acadian a 30 day extension, so members will have more time to make a final decision.

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