B. Emergency Transport Services

Humboldt and Del Norte Counties are in the North Coast Emergency Medical Services Agency’s area. There are four privately owned and operated ambulance services located in the two county area. City Ambulance also operates three branch locations. They are:

• Del Norte Ambulance Service, Crescent City - serving the county of Del Norte
• Arcata-Mad River Ambulance Service, Arcata - serving northern Humboldt County
• Hoopa Ambulance Service, Hoopa - serving eastern Humboldt County
• City Ambulance, Eureka - serving the Humboldt Bay area
• City Ambulance, Fortuna - serving the Fortuna area
• City Ambulance, Garberville - serving southern Humboldt County

The number of annual calls for emergency ambulance services is summarized in Table 6.3. (Note: numbers of transports are presented in the aggregate at the request of the privately-operated businesses.)

Because of the geographic isolation of the area, air transports are also necessary for those cases requiring more intensive care. Table 6.4 summarizes the number of air transports initiated by Humboldt/Del Norte hospitals in 1997. As different area hospitals refer to different out-of-area hospitals, the variations are summarized in Table S6.4-1 below. Data was collected by a telephone survey in the Fall 1997 and represent estimates of transports.

For the cardiac care patients, the two hospitals most frequently cited were Mercy Medical Center in Redding and Redding Medical Center in Redding. Note, that the Sutter Coast Hospital numbers include air transports to hospitals in Eureka although they are located in the "region."

For the purposes of Table 6.4, we assumed that the referral to out-of-area hospitals is influenced primarily by patient preference, provider recommendation, and/or payer source. Thus, we estimated that roughly 1/3 of these patients are referred to Rogue Valley Medical Center in Medford, Oregon with the remainder staying in California. The approximately 275 patients air transported each year represents about 1.7% of all hospital admissions to area hospitals.