COLDWATER, MI (WTVB)- When Life Care Ambulance entered into a new contract with Branch County earlier this year, it agreed to some stringent conditions of operation including response times of 15 minutes or less on 80% of there priority one calls, and 30 minutes on priority three non life threatening calls, or face a 5% reduction is quarterly subsidy payment, the agreement with the county does waive the penalty in cases like extreme weather and system overloads.
For the first time since the agreement Life Care is facing a penalty for not meeting the time frames agreed upon in the contract for the first quarter.
Life Care’s average non emergency response time was 13 minutes and 38 seconds, but arrival within 30 minutes occured only 63% of the time.
In the first quarter of this year, January – March Life Care responded to 1,090 calls.
County Administrator Frank Walsh told commissioners that LifeCare deducted $1,230 from the $48,000 quarterly payments billed to the county as the penalty for the slower then agreed to response times.



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