911 bypass letter angers Van Buren officials

story by Marla Cantrell
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An otherwise uneventful Van Buren City Council meeting heated up Monday night (July 19) over a letter suggesting those in need of ambulance services might want to think twice before calling 911.

Robby Hines, co-owner of Southwest EMS, the company holding the exclusive contract to provide ambulance service for all of Crawford County,  presented a letter to the aldermen, purportedly from competitor Care One Emergency Medical Services. Hines said the letter was sent to certain Van Buren residents last month, including one of his employees.

In it was this statement: “CALL Care One directly at 1-800-396-6075. If you dial 911 you will waste precious minutes answering questions from a POLICE dispatcher then be transferred to an ambulance dispatcher to answer more questions. CALL CARE ONE DIRECTLY! If you do call 911 STATE you only want a Care One ambulance! Care One considers your call a PRIVATE matter. We do not announce your address or name over any County radio as other ambulance services do. We do not send the local fire department/first responders unless you request. We will respond without lights or sirens if you desire.”

“This was mailed out by our competition,” Hines said. “You are out there in your community more than I am,” Hines said. “You know your neighbors; you know your church people and things like that. We need to talk up 911. That’s the system that we use. We need people to call 911 so they get the fastest possible service they can.”

Mayor Bob Freeman face reddened as he responded.

“This leads to an issue of life safety of someone who calls (Care One) directly, goes around the 911 system,” Freeman said, “so a first responder from the fire department, for example, doesn’t respond because they don’t know there’s an issue there and there’s potential loss of life, because someone’s had a heart attack and someone could be there quickly to administer aid while the ambulance is in route.”

Don Jenkins, Van Buren’s city attorney, said there is already legal action underway, not because of the 911 issue, but because Care One Emergency Medical Services is not the contractor for the city.

“The City of Van Buren has a declaratory action filed in Circuit Court against Care One right now,” Jenkins said. “We’re saying that Southwest has an exclusive contract in Van Buren and we believe this is a violation of that action. We’re waiting. Basically we’ve finished discovery and we’re waiting on a hearing date to see if the court agrees with our analysis. Our basis is the exclusive contract, but one of our main concerns is that they’re asking citizens to bypass the 911 system. That in itself is not illegal, but bypassing the ordinance is.”

Southwest EMS, based in Mena, has had the contract for the City of Van Buren for more than three years. It also took over the contract for Crawford County, previously held by Care One Emergency Medical Services, on Jan. 1.

Southwest EMS serves five counties. Hines said in Crawford County, he employs 70 full- and part-time workers and keeps seven ambulances in strategic areas to meet the county’s emergency needs.

No one from Care One spoke at the Van Buren City Council meeting.