Search for new ambulance company in Colorado Springs starts over

It is back to square one for the City of Colorado Springs and their search for a new ambulance company.

Back in March, the city announced they were looking at other companies despite their 40-year relationship with their current provider, American Medical Response (AMR).

Colorado Springs Fire Chief Ted Collas said today this, “wasn’t an indictment on AMR, that wasn’t the intention but the intention was, how can we better improve this system for the citizens of Colorado Springs?”

The city was in negotiations with the company, Priority Ambulance but those talks ended last week. Collas said, “that scope of work tells those who are presenting their proposal for the RFP (Request for Proposal) what they can expect to do, what we expect them to do. That’s when we started to deviate away from that scope of work. I really don’t want to go into details because we’re going tp publish another RFP.”

Collas said he couldn’t get into specifics and what deviated in the original RFP, but expects a new one to be published in the next year.

For now, AMR will continue to provide services to the city. Under their current contract, they can have year-long extensions added for another five years. It’s unclear whether or not they are also entering the new proposals. A statement from their Regional Director Scott Lenn said, “AMR is very encouraged with what we heard today and look forward to meeting with Colorado Springs fire and the city.”

Collas said it could take more than a year for the city to decide on a new company and go through the negotiation process again.