Multnomah County passes plan to improve ambulance response times

The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners unanimously voted Thursday to approve a temporary staffing plan that aims to improve ambulance response times in the county. The decision comes after months of disagreement between the county and its sole ambulance services provider, American Medical Response.

The company hasn’t met its contractual requirement to respond to 90% of life-threatening calls within eight minutes since 2022. AMR has long blamed the delays on the county’s requirement that each ambulance be staffed with two paramedics. The new agreement will allow some ambulances to be staffed by one paramedic and one EMT through July of next year.
Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson joins us to talk about all of that and more.