Falck took over San Diego’s contract from AMR in November. Since then, the company has faced hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for not meeting response time compliance.
Since April, there has been a marked improvement. In April, response times hit the mark and met the 90% requirement in all areas of the city for all types of calls. Behm emphasized that wait times at the hospitals are still part of the problem when it comes to response delays. To reach full staffing, he said the company is still looking for roughly 30 paramedics. “It's really challenging and we're doing everything we can to incentivize our employees to work and pick up additional shifts. We're also paying our EMTs to go to paramedic school to be the future of the paramedics in the City of San Diego,” he said.
“It's not yet there. We're on our way and we are working to try to reach that goal of 1,008 overall unit hours,” Behm said.