Contra Costa County struggles with ambulance demand amid shortage

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, Calif. - Contra Costa County continues to deal with a shortage of ambulances.

In recent weeks, ambulance services were reduced to Level Zero, which means no units available for transport.

The county fire chief told the board of supervisors last week that part of the problem is getting patients transferred to hospitals, an issue he's been working to resolve.

"We have also started to institute some offload policies at hospitals where after a certain point in time, we become much more engaged with their staff to essentially work very aggressively with their staff to get that patient transferred to the hospital," said Fire Chief Lewis Broschard.

Broschard said the wait time to offload patients is typically an hour, far longer than the state and county standard of 20 minutes.