District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department and Office of Contracting and Procurement: District Response Times To Basic Life Support Calls Have Improved, but Contract Award And Administration Deficiencies Need to be Addressed

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA FIRE AND EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES DEPARTMENT AND OFFICE OF CONTRACTING AND PROCUREMENT:

District Response Times to Basic Life Support Calls Have Improved, but Contract Award and Administration Deficiencies Need to Be Addressed

What the OIG Found

Overall, the contract between the District and AMR improved the District’s capability to respond to medical emergencies in a timely manner. Some of the improvements include reduced average response times, increased training hours for staff (EMTs and paramedics), and increased ambulance availability to respond to more serious or life threatening calls. District personnel, including the contract administrator (CA) and program manager, have worked hard to implement third-party BLS ambulance services; however, the OIG found deficiencies in both the award process and the administration function of the contract.

During the contract award process, the District may not have established a fair and reasonable price for the services. Specifically, the District did not obtain adequate competition to award the contract; cited pricing from vendors who did not participate in the Request For Proposal (RFP) process; and inappropriately developed the Statement of Work (SOW) and specifications. Consequently, competition for the solicitation may have been unnecessarily restricted.

OIG also found that during contract administration, the District did not monitor AMR to assess penalties for failure to meet performance targets in a timely manner and did not ensure the amount AMR billed the District was accurate, complete, and verifiable.

Had the District based payments for BLS services on actual, verifiable documentation of ambulance hours spent responding to BLS calls (from the time AMR received calls to when it cleared calls), the District would have paid approximately $2.7 million less than the $6 million total payment it made under the contract from November 11, 2016, to May 31, 2017.