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• • <br />5. Hospital Closures - Wrthin the last few years we have lost five local hospitals in our transport area due to <br />facility closures. We have replaced them with only one. It is no secret about how often hospitals go on drive-by. <br />Furthermore, when we do transport to our approved local hospitals, the waiting time for a bed has increased <br />overthe last couple of years. Ourtumaround time is increasing monthly because we are waiting for available <br />beds to become open. <br />In closing, we may be doing our citizens a great disservice overall by not transporting them to the hospital of <br />their choice to include the Houston Medical Center. The twenty plus minutes we spend on the scene waiting for <br />a private ambulance company delays patient care by a physician. The private ambulance companies more <br />often than not are not staffed or equipped to deliver the level of care during transport to the hospital that La <br />Porte EMS provides. I believe that most of the 67 transports last year were our citizens with special needs. I see <br />little burden on our service with an increased turnaround time of an additional 20 to 40 minutes (transporting to <br />the Houston Medical Center} depending on the time of day. Lastly, we always have a supervisor in the city with <br />all the equipment that our ambulances have and a competent Fire Department to back them up. <br />I recommend that we change our transport policy to include the downtown Houston Medical Center. <br />• Page 2 <br />