Kern residents in rural areas have asked for paramedic service in their communities, and next week Kern County Supervisors will consider a report that shows there is no easy way to do that.

Neighbors in the community of Pine Mountain Club have pleaded for paramedic-firefighters, but the report from the Kern County Emergency Services Department offers four alternatives and concludes each is not cost effective.

The report goes to county supervisors on Tuesday morning, and so far two supervisors sound skeptical. Eyewitness News contacted Supervisor Ray Watson who represents the Pine Mountain Club area.

"It boils down to who will pay for paramedic services," Watson told Eyewitness News. So far, patients and their medical insurance have paid for paramedics staffed in ambulances. Watson says if Kern County wants to train firefighters as paramedics will residents in rural areas be willing to form special districts and vote to tax themselves to cover the extra cost?

Eyewitness News put in calls to all the other supervisors. Supervisor Don Maben responded, and said he thinks they should leave the system as it is.

But, Pine Mountain residents say they need paramedics who can reach them faster in an emergency. Karen Bailey says when her husband needed help, the local firefighters were there quickly. But trained only at the EMT level, they could not save him.

"I want advanced life support paramedics stationed in every rural fire house, that's my long range goal," says Bailey.

Kern County Fire Chief Dennis Thompson showed Eyewitness News 12 communities that have a fire station, but no ambulance stationed nearby. These are areas where paramedic firefighters could be considered.

Chief Thompson says this done in other areas. "Of the paid fire departments in California, approximately 60-percent of them provide paramedic level service," he told Eyewitness News.

For Kern, that would take adding 60 firefighters with paramedic training.

The new report analyzes that option and three others. It reviewed the number of emergency calls, costs, and response times for fire trucks versus ambulances.

As for the alternative of firefighter paramedics, the report concludes "devoting 60 (firefighter) paramedics at a cost of nearly $80-thousand to reduce paramedic response times by 12 to 25 minutes for 408 calls a year is not an efficient use of resources."

The report's next alternative is adding paramedics in ambulances in remote areas. That would take new county requirements for ambulance company operations, who would likely pass their higher costs to patients. The report's conclusion: "not an efficient use of resources."

The next alternative is "contract paramedics." That's where an ambulance company would supply paramedics based in the fire stations. The conclusion: "not an efficient use of resources."

The final alternative in the report is using what's called an EMT-II level of training. Those technicians have less training than paramedics, but can administer the same life-saving drugs. But again, the conclusion is: "not an efficient use of resources."

Emergency Services Director Ross Elliott wrote the report. He says in the year 2005 there were about 55-thousand emergency calls in the entire county. Paramedic-level services were needed to save lives in the rural areas about 400 times that's less than one-percent of all the emergencies.

"I think where we need to be looking at is cost of a paramedic program to cover these rural areas, versus that small number." In his summary of the analysis, Elliott asserts the current system does work.

"Given the small volume of incidents where paramedic services are not immediately available, it can be argued that existing EMS system design results in exemplary service to nearly all of the people nearly all of the time, and that providing urban level EMS services in every remote area of the County is infeasible."

The report goes to the board of supervisors Tuesday morning. Supervisors can decide to leave the system as is, or make changes to increase paramedic services to the rural areas.

As Elliott sees it, "That's going to be the question the Board's going to have to grapple with."