RIVER FALLS – When the City of River Falls contracted with Allina Health EMS in 2020 for providing ambulance services, one stipulation was that Allina provide a quarterly performance report.

Allina staffs two ambulances for the River Falls response are 24/7, and a third for 17 hours per day during peak activity hours.

This is the first full quarter of responding in the community. How did they do? Allina met all performance expectations for the first quarter. Mayor Dan Toland said what he thought at the April 27 River Falls City Council meeting.

“I couldn’t be happier,” Toland said.

The performance terms of the contract require from Allina:

•Assurances that interfacility transfers do not interfere with their ability to meet 911 service obligations

•Ability to regularly respond to at least two concurrently 911 incidents in the service area with two different ambulances

•Meet or exceed a 00:10:59 response time, at least 90 percent of the time, in the cities of River Falls and Prescott

•Meet or exceed a 00:17:59 response time, at least 90 percent of the time, in the participating towns of the service area.

River Falls Ambulance Operations Supervisor Matthew Bouthilet, in a memo to Assistant City Administrator Jason Stroud, said the EMS service transition is complete. He wrote proudly about the employees.

“We have a strong group of clinicians that have stayed with us throughout this transition – many of which continue to live in or near the very communities we serve,” Bouthilet said. “Despite all of the changes they have been a part of, we have only lost 3 percent of our staff.”

A few casual-time staff members increased to full-time positions. The service is also looking to increase its community involvement this summer. “This lack of turnover helps ensure that we keep strong bonds to the community with a workforce that is experienced and knowledgeable of this area and its residents,” Bouthilet said.

Response times

Staff have exceeded response time requirements. According to Bouthilet, Allina Health EMS responded to 421 service calls and 133 interfacility transfer requests from local hospital in the last quarter.

Response time is measured from the moment the phone rings in the St. Paul communications center until the moment the ambulance arrives at the call.

According to the report, the goal is a 10:59 response time or better in River Falls and Prescott city limits and a 17:59 response time in the townships. In 98.4 percent of 911 responses, that time was met with an average response time of 6:04 minutes across all areas.

“One key factor in being able to accomplish these numbers is the staffing of a third ambulance,” Bouthilet said. “In the first quarter, Allina Health EMS provided three ambulances for a 13hour period of each day. Starting April 10, this has been increased to 17 hours out of each day.”

Allina also provided mutual aid to neighboring service areas four times, while receiving mutual aid nine times. According to a city memo, the dispatch center diverted seven of the nine calls to other services on purpose, even though Allina had ambulances available, because those services had ambulances nearer to the incident at the time.

Next quarter, new ventilators will be deployed in all Allina’s ambulances, providing more advanced ventilatory care and resuscitation techniques in the field. “We also plan to roll out a new medication, transexamic acid, which has been shown in studies to decrease bleeding in trauma patients – bringing resources out into the field that were previously only available in the hospital and buying us more time to transport these patients directly to a trauma center and definitive care,” Bouthilet said.