In order to be eligible to receive a license to operate an ambulance service within the limits of the City of Knoxville, an applicant shall meet the following criteria at the time of application for such license, and if such license is granted, shall continue to meet such criteria during the licensure period:
A. An ambulance service must hold and maintain a valid certificate of EMS service authorization issued by the Iowa Department of Public Health pursuant to 641 IAC 132 to operate at the paramedic level in the City of Knoxville, Iowa.
B. An ambulance service must have available for operation within the City of Knoxville at all times an adequate number of ambulances and qualified personnel to provide 24-hour per day, 7-day per week (“24/7”) ambulance service, including a minimum of two advanced life support ambulances to be staffed by at least one paramedic, plus one other EMT.
C. An ambulance service must have a supervisor on duty 24/7. That supervisor may be in either an ambulance or a non-transporting supervisory vehicle. The non-transporting vehicle must be equipped at the advanced life support level. This supervisor must be able to respond while on duty at all times.
D. An ambulance service must have the capability to operate an ambulance dispatch center, continuously and 24/7, and located in the city limits of Knoxville equipped with a geographically reference Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system covering the entire service area of the ambulance service. The ambulance dispatch center shall be equipped with telephone equipment capable of receiving and passing to the computer-aided dispatch system location information for both wire-line and wireless requests for service. The CAD system shall be capable of processing Emergency Medical Dispatch (EMD) protocols and call types, and shall have real time connectivity to the primary dispatching authority receiving medical calls for the city.
E. The ambulance dispatch center, its vehicles, and employees shall acquire and maintain equipment capable of operating on the Marion County-wide radio system and the State of Iowa regional and statewide medical communications frequencies. Access to the countywide radio system shall be obtained through the Joint Communications Agency and approved by the Marion County E911 Governance Board. Ambulance services that use the countywide radio system as their primary means of communication are subject to the rules and regulations of the system, including user fees.
F. An ambulance service must have and maintain a specific plan for requesting assistance, mutual-aid, or automatic aid when they have no units available for an incident under normal operating conditions and mass-casualty incidents. The plan should be updated annually and signed by all involved ambulance services. The ambulance service will provide the signed plan to the Fire Chief for review on the first business day of May and if approved the plan will be in effect for the next fiscal year. If the plan requires a mid-year change, the ambulance service will submit the requested change to the Fire Chief. The Fire Chief has 30 days to accept or reject the proposed changes. (Ord. 23-09, 7-17-2023)