Emergency services in the City of Lubbock will continue to be discussed, as the Lubbock City Council voted to hold a special meeting Tuesday, February 16 to discuss forming a subcommittee about the issue.
This item came up for discussion at Thursday’s city council meeting. Currently, EMS services are through University Medical Center in the city limits.
“UMC went to the city council to ask for a five year extension on our agreement to run EMS, 911 service in the city limits,” Marketing Director at UMC Eric Finley said. “Since 1984, we’ve run it on a one year, automatic renewal every April.”
Leaders from Covenant Medical Center also attended Thursday’s meeting, to discuss their feelings about EMS services in the city.
“Well it wasn’t just Covenant’s perspective, but from a tax payer perspective, I think we were concerned there was an item that was such a large exclusive contract on a consent agenda with the city council,” Ainsley Nelson, Regional Director of Communications and Marketing at Covenant Medical Center said.
” And we felt like that the issues going on with EMS have been going on for a very long time, and that was something that really needed to go for public discussion and be open for anyone to comment,” she said.
After a long period of discussion, the city council decided to postpone the vote on the contract, and also decided to hold a special meeting Tuesday. At the meeting, they will form a subcommittee, made up of representatives from the council, UMC, Covenant, Lubbock Fire Rescue, and possibly even Lubbock County Commissioners, to look into this issue further.
“We’ve offered joint ambulance services with UMC, and unfortunately those offers were declined,” Nelson said. “And then it may be possible for us to have a dual ambulance hospital service here in our community.”
Finley said he was aware that in 2015, there were discussions about that topic, but he said he was unaware as to why they stopped.
Council will meet February 16 at noon.
