Judge Rejects Kern County Appeal on Friday; Hall Ambulance Service Founder, Harvey Hall, Dies on Saturday Morning

Frazier Park, CA (Monday, May 21, 2018)—On Friday, May 18, 2018, Administrative Law Judge Samuel D. Reyes said a legal appeal by Kern County’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Department should be denied. On Saturday morning, May 19, founder of the Hall Ambulance Service, Harvey Hall, died. The Mountain Enterprise received a copy of the judge’s recommendation on Monday, May 21.

Kern County’s appeal protested a ruling by the California State Emergency Medical Authority (EMA). The EMA has refused to accept Kern County’s decades-long practice of handing virtual monopoly contracts to Hall Ambulance Service in the form of Exclusive Operating Areas (EOAs). The state said that Kern County failed to follow state guidelines for “grandfathering” a company into EOAs in three of ten EOA territories. The judge said the state statute requires that all of the county’s EOAs must be within compliance with state guidelines or a county’s entire EMS plan is to be rejected:

“[T]he Authority’s rejection of the plans is upheld with respect to three of the operating areas and not upheld with respect to seven of the operating areas. Because the regulation governing appeals such as this one requires adoption or rejection of an
entire plan, the Plans must be rejected because of the deficiencies in the three operating areas.”

Judge Reyes said he recommends that the EMA Commission decide that the state’s rejection of Kern County’s 2012 and 2015 EMS plan should be sustained in the commission’s July or September meeting.

In postings online for several years, Hall Ambulance Service has claimed it serves 90% of the county’s population, but in interviews and in print recently, it has modified that claim to say it serves 88% of the people of  Kern County.

Bakersfield, CA (Saturday, May 19, 2018)— The man who was Bakersfield’s longest-serving mayor, the founder of Hall Ambulance Service, died early Saturday morning.  In May it was confirmed that he had an untreatable disease, according to the company’s announcement. Hall was 77. He began his ambulance service in 1971. He began receiving a subsidy from the Mountain Communities Mountain Memories Association (MMA) to maintain an ambulance in Frazier Park. MMA raised the funds through their annual “first weekend in August” three-day community party known as Fiesta Days (which will celebrate its 51st year this August).

This is part of the May 18, 2018 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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