Westlock town council stopped short of calling for legal action against Alberta Health Services, opting instead to make one final attempt to lobby Barrhead-Morinville-Westlock MLA Maureen Kubinec on the issue.
Town CAO Dean Krause reported to council that AHS had rejected an invoice that represents costs incurred in providing ambulance service on behalf of the province.
“Even though a formula was agreed upon in a previous meeting with Alberta Health, and administration did those calculations in accordance with a formula we agreed upon, when we submitted it they basically came back and said no again,” he said.
Town administration has provided information to AHS about how the service ran a $342,000 deficit, which represents the shortfall the town incurred running the ambulance service and transferring assets to Associated Ambulance in 2012. Some of this information was presented to AHS in a change order to the contract while the town ran the service.
AHS has rejected that amount, and has been in negotiations with the town since the town’s ambulance service contract ended on March 31, 2012.
“We met with the MLA in September and she indicated to us to try one more time. We have tried one more time,” said town legislative and corporate services director Carol Revega.
Administration reported that at a prior meeting it seemed like the two sides had reached an agreement, but their most recent request for payment was met with a flat-out “no.”
Councillors’ frustration with the ongoing issue was apparent at the meeting, with Coun. Sheila Foley going as far as to suggest legal action.
“We extended our service to accommodate them, and they slapped us in the face and are not going to pay us our bill,” she said. “Why don’t we get a hold of our lawyers and send them a letter of notice?”
Revega noted that AHS has said the service provided, which rather than being simply a local service actually saw local ambulances being called into other jurisdictions, was an enhanced service beyond what the contract stipulated.
“Which they were happy to receive, and they want our 5,000 residents to pay for that service, which went all the way up to Fort McMurray, Hinton and wherever it was called,” Foley said. “It’s not fair.”
Ultimately councillors opted to again raise the issue with Kubinec as opposed to phoning their lawyer, but the message was nonetheless clear.
“This has gone on long enough,” mayor Ralph Leriger said. “It’s a long, long saga and certainly it’s an amount this community can ill afford to walk away from. It’s a legitimate expense and it needs to be paid, period.”
Kubinec said in a Dec. 13 interview that she had spoken with Leriger following the council meeting, and was unhappy about how things were working out. She said she intended to raise the issue with health minister Fred Horne on the town’s behalf, but he was out of the province last week.
“There’s definitely a wrinkle that I’m not happy with that I need to look into,” she said. “My understanding is there had been a path forward, and there was a veering off of that path. That bothers me; I need to address that with the minister.”
Revega provided background on the issue for the benefit of the new councillors.
In 2008, the province announced municipalities would no longer be required to provide ambulance services effective April 1, 2009.
Service in the Westlock area had previously been provided by the town, the county, the Village of Clyde and the M.D. of Lesser Slave River.
None of the other partners wanted to take on a contract with AHS, so the town did so on its own — an initial two-year agreement that would end March 31, 2011.
Revega said that at the time, AHS didn’t realize large municipalities would want out, and ended up spending a lot of time in negotiations with those cities.
“They didn’t then have the time for the rest of us to negotiate a contract beyond March 31, 2011, so they automatically renewed all the contracts,” she said.
The town provided notice in January 2011 that it would no longer provide the service after March 31, 2012, and AHS indicated that Westlock would become a direct-service point, meaning AHS itself would provide the ambulance service.
That changed suddenly in summer 2011, when AHS said a private service provider, Associated Ambulance, would take over ambulance services in town. Regardless, the town was told it could give its staff notice for March 31, 2012.
“We got to March 2012 and they wanted to extend our contract further because they weren’t prepared with their private service contractor,” Revega said.
“The town said no at that time, because again our union agreement ended and we gave our staff notice for March 31, 2012.”
In the meantime, the town had incurred about $342,000 of expenses between providing the ambulance service and transferring that service to Associated Ambulance.
