Deadline nears for Yachats Fire to take over ambulance service; PacWest may loan vehicle if needed after July 31

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS – There will be an ambulance stationed in Yachats on Aug. 1 – it’s just not clear quite yet whose name will be on the side of it.

The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District has told the longtime nonprofit South Lincoln Ambulance that serves the Yachats area that it will no longer staff its ambulance after July 31. But interim fire chief Jeff Mathia has been unable to negotiate an agreement to have SLA give its ambulance to the fire district and take over the service contract authorized by Lincoln County.

If that doesn’t happen by the end of July, Mathia said Pacific West Ambulance – which holds contracts to serve the rest of the county – has agreed to loan a vehicle that Yachats firefighter/paramedics can staff.

But county commissioners still need to also sign off on who provides ambulance service.

That’s the situation that played out in Yachats during a fire board meeting Monday and in Newport during a county commission meeting Wednesday.

In June, Yachats Fire extended its agreement to staff the SLA ambulance until July 31 to see if a transition could be worked out. But with two weeks left until the end of the month and no agreement in place, Mathia told the fire board that he’s working with PacWest to arrange for ambulance coverage in SLA’s service area – which spans seven miles south of the city to Wakonda Beach Road south of Waldport.

“We are moving away from South Lincoln Ambulance for various reasons, and we as an agency are looking to maintain the ambulance within town here,” Mathia said.

South Lincoln Ambulance’s contract with the county was on the commission’s agenda Wednesday but suddenly removed before the 10 a.m. meeting. SLA president Shelby Knife, a former Yachats Fire assistant administrator, was scheduled to talk to the board.

County counsel Kristin Yuille told commissioners Casey Miller and Walter Chuck that SLA asked it to be withdrawn because it was still negotiating with Yachats Fire. She then asked for a special commission meeting July 30 to see if the county’s contract to provide ambulance service needed to be given to someone else.

Under questioning by Miller, Yuille said she “was not privy” to negotiations between SLA and Yachats Fire. Miller’s motion asking Yuille to provide a memo “of anything we might be privy to” failed for lack of a second.

Mathia said after Wednesday’s commission meeting that he, SLA board members and their attorneys are scheduled to meet Friday to keep working on a transition agreement. Mathia said he is asking the Yachats Fire board to schedule a special meeting July 28 to go over any agreement.

Cutting the ties

The relationship between the fire district and SLA may be unique in Oregon. The nonprofit was formed apart from the fire department in 1967 to raise money for an ambulance to serve the Yachats area. As the fire department moved from a mostly volunteer organization to paid firefighter/paramedics, previous boards agreed to have fire district employees staff the ambulance for little to no compensation.

In the past three years that led to more conflict as the district struggled with finances and neighboring departments complained they were forced to cover Yachats’ calls when its two on-duty firefighters were gone for hours transporting patients to Newport, Florence or even into the Willamette Valley.

Mathia, who has 20 years of experience managing ambulance services, said Yachats Fire cannot take over the service without getting SLA’s ambulance and equipment because there are not enough transports to break even.

“However, with the revenue that I’ve seen South Lincoln generate, if we can get the ambulance and the equipment and some of the other associated stuff, and take over the billing, we can actually make it work,” he said Monday. “What I can’t do is I can’t afford both. I can’t go out and buy an ambulance and all the associated equipment and rely on billing to try to cover that.”

Yachats Fire has been covering South Lincoln Ambulance’s expenses by providing labor, Mathia said, and those costs can be as much as 60 percent of the ambulance budget.

Adding to that is the fact reimbursements from the insurance industry are bad, especially Medicare, Mathia said. Insurers also pick over claims looking “for every possible way to deny” them, Mathia said, which can force districts to go through an appeals process and lead to payments being delayed as much as six to nine months.

SLA board member and former Yachats Fire administrator Frankie Petrick has been the lead in discussions with the district. The other board members are Knife, who left in 2025 to work for the county, and Waldport attorney Holly Gibbons, who was once married to Knife.

Since stepping into his position March 1, Mathia has advocated for keeping an ambulance stationed in Yachats. Pacific West agrees, Mathia said, but that the company cannot afford to staff or station an ambulance in Yachats because there are not enough calls.

While PacWest may not be able to staff an ambulance, the fire district can, Mathia said. And it can earn a “bigger chunk of the pie” from transporting than it did with the South Lincoln, which will decrease the burden on the taxpayers who pay for the service.

“While we’ve tried to work with South Lincoln Ambulance over the last several months, if not upwards to about a year-and-a-half now … it’s getting nowhere,” Mathia said. “So I’ve taken the steps to put the hammer down and say July 31 is your last day of operation.”

PacWest will likely be the primary ambulance service responding to non-emergency calls for the next couple of months so that an ambulance can stay at the station for critical calls, he added.

“If somebody’s having what we think may be a heart attack, a stroke, drowning, major car accident, we’ll roll in the ambulance and if we need to transport we’ll have an agreement established with Pacific West to do the transport and not have to wait for the unit to come down,” Mathia said. “And the last thing I want to see is a critical call being delayed because all the ambulances are tied up, including ours, transporting a non-emergency patient.”

PacWest owner J.D. Fuiten, who also owns parent company Metro West Ambulance, has made clear the company will assist Yachats with whatever is needed, Mathia said.

“I believe that our transition away from South Lincoln Ambulance is the right thing to do,” Mathia said. “However, I’m still entertaining the notion that if South Lincoln Ambulance wants to provide or donate their equipment and ambulance to us, then I’m willing to talk to them about that. But they have to decide something by July 31.”

PacWest is aware that Yachats Fire plans to apply to the county to cover the Yachats service area in 2027 when the current contract with South Lincoln Ambulance expires. And it may be that Yachats Fire remains the secondary provider to PacWest, Mathia said. That decision rests with the county commissioners who assign the service areas.

But regardless of who is primary, Mathia said, if Yachats Fire transports patients the district wants to be paid fairly for it. For the first few months, Mathia said, PacWest is willing to help Yachats handle billing.

“So it should be a seamless transition,” he said. “You should not see any difference in the type of service. You just might see a different name on the side of the ambulance.”

Another reason Mathia said the district is moving away from South Lincoln Ambulance is because it was the primary provider for the Tenmile area in north Lane County and had a legal obligation to respond to every medical call there. Mathia removed Yachats Fire from that equation and now Western Lane Fire & EMS Authority is the primary responder.

But Mathia said the district wants to be a good neighbor and will do everything it can to help make sure Tenmile residents continue to receive the same level of service.

“But again, if it’s not the emergency heart attack, stroke, something major, we want someone else that’s responsible for that to take those types of transports,” he said.

Mathia told the fire board there is talk around Yachats “that the new fire chief wants out of the ambulance business.”

“I will tell you, that’s the farthest from the truth,” he said. “I am here to make sure we have an ambulance in town. One that we can afford to do, one that we can maintain in the long term, and will still provide the same service you’ve been getting for the last 30-plus years.”

The board approved Mathia to negotiate with PacWest and South Lincoln Ambulance to work out a transition plan and to represent the district with county staff and commissioners.

County needs to OK

There are two issues to resolve concerning the ambulance service area, Mathia told the board. The first is deciphering who has the assigned area. In 2022 Yachats Fire and South Lincoln Ambulance applied jointly to have the service area but the county’s contract assigned it solely to SLA.

“… SLA needs to advise the county that as of Aug. 1 they can no longer provide the service because YRFPD won’t be providing personnel to staff it,” Mathia told the board. “The county commissioners will (then) need to assign somebody temporarily to the service area. Pacific West has already agreed to provide that and have written letters of support of us working together.”

After the meeting, Mathia told the Lincoln Chronicle there have been discussions about SLA giving the ambulance to the fire district, but that SLA board members want certain conditions in place that keep them in the ambulance business.

“And just things I know, I don’t want to associate with SLA moving forward,” he said.

The district cannot afford to buy the ambulance, valued at about $360,000, or the equipment, but it can afford to operate it, Mathia said. He hopes the district and SLA can reach an agreement to donate the vehicle “since we’ve provided so many dollars in labor ….”

“We just don’t want them running the operation,” he said. “We don’t want them billing or anything like that because there’s too many issues there.”

There will be no change in service for Yachats residents, Mathia said, except possibly the name on the side of the ambulance.

“There will be an ambulance all the way through this,” he reiterated. “And again, whether its SLA on the side of the box or PacWest, there will be an ambulance here. And we’ll staff whatever ambulance is here.”

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for Lincoln Chronicle and can be reached at [email protected]
• Quinton Smith of the Lincoln Chronicle staff contributed to this report.