Shoreline Fire Dept. will now manage advanced emergency services for Bothell

Published 11:40 am Friday, February 22, 2008

When Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland announced it wanted out of the advanced life support business, King County began to discuss with Shoreline and other fire departments who should take over offering the service.

Evergreen offered ALS service— aid units staffed with paramedics— to Bothell, Redmond, Kirkland, Woodinville and Duval.

There are two types of emergency medical services, advanced life support (ALS), and basic life support (BLS) aid units which are staffed with emergency medical technicians (EMT’s).

After two years of negotiating, Shoreline Fire Department has recently been contracted by King County to take over managing the city of Bothell’s ALS service. The Fire Department already oversees ALS service for the cities of Shoreline, Lake Forest Park and Kenmore, said Shoreline Fire Chief J.B. Smith, adding Bothell was a natural extension.

“Evergreen had a Bothell Medic Unit located at the Bothell Fire Station 42, and when they said they were going out of the business, King County contracted with us to take over managing that unit.”

With that change, the Shoreline Fire Department will receive $1.3 million from King County to oversee nine employees and require the paramedics in Bothell to be crosstrained — certified as a firefighters as well.

This requirement is a value to Bothell and the region, Smith said, because the EMTs will be dual-use— they can serve as firefighters too.

At first, the county asked Shoreline Fire Department to take on all of Evergreen’s service area, but the department declined, Smith said. Redmond has stepped up to manage the ALS services for the rest of Evergreen’s area.

The negotiations took a while to hammer out the details with all the area unions, Smith said.

“There was a fair amount of controversy because some of the medics had 20 to 25 years with Evergreen. We promised we’d accommodate them all—they have 18 months to go through the training,” he said.

“And our union gave concessions to allow Northshore and Bothell firefighters to take the paramedic test so that they could go into the medic program, increasing the labor pool for paramedics,” said Ron Mehlert, Shoreline deputy chief of operations.

The Shoreline Fire Commission created a separate ALS budget at its Feb. 6 meeting of $3.4 million to manage ALS services it provides to its city, Lake Forest Park, Kenmore and Bothell. To recover some of Shoreline’s administrative and overhead costs, the department plans to bill the jurisdictions five percent of the total contract amount.