The Town Council heard a status report from Rural/Metro Corp. at its Nov. 17 regular session. The company is under contract to provide fire and emergency medical response services to the Town of Fountain Hills.

Brian Davis, head of Rural/Metro’s Central Arizona Division, made the presentation with support from Fountain Hills Fire Chief Dave Ott. Rural/Metro has three divisions in the state based in Pima County and Yuma County, as well as Maricopa County.

Davis took the opportunity to introduce himself to the council, as he has been in the job only about a year. He also spoke about Global Medical Response (GMR), Rural/Metro’s parent company.

GMR has risen as an emergency medical transport company, but with Rural/Metro it provides fire suppression services in communities, as well as industrial and aviation operations. Davis noted that Rural/Metro staffs operations similar to Fountain Hills in Oregon, Tennessee and the Chicago area.

The company served about 10 million patients in the past year with nearly 38,000 employees nationwide, according to Davis.

Davis said Rural/Metro is well equipped to serve its clients and patients during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There are no shortages of PPE (personal protective equipment) for personnel and no real possibility of running out,” Davis said.

He added that the company has a warehouse cache in Tempe for storing PPE and other necessary supplies for responding to the pandemic.

Local firefighters are following a nationwide protocol for safety, which has been successful. Davis said Central Arizona personnel have had just 17 positive COVID tests since the pandemic began.

“We have the full resources of a national organization providing residents cutting edge in emergency transport,” Davis said.

He said that as of Nov. 16, GMR had transported the largest number of COVID patients of any organization in the country.

Councilman Alan Magazine challenged Davis for an explanation of reported “extremely high costs” of medical transport patients are being billed for.

Davis said the high transport bills, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands, are a factor of a very low percentage of payment.

“The average payment is $300 to $500,” Davis said.