Salem Fire Department took medic calls to boost revenues according to Falck legal filing 

The Salem Fire Department in recent years took over medic calls to boost its revenues, crowding ahead of the private company tasked with emergency transportation in Salem, according to a new legal filing.

Falck Northwest claims city officials now are attempting to “double dip” by seeking $7 million for calls the fire agency already had billed for.

The company made the allegations in a filing in Marion County Circuit Court, making the case for why it shouldn’t face a lawsuit from the city of Salem. 

The city sued Falck on July 1, alleging it didn’t fulfill its contract and was negligent in the way it provided ambulance service.

Falck, a multinational private ambulance company based in Denmark, provided Salem with ambulance services for a decade. 

The fire department took over service on July 1. Fire officials last year said the change was justified because the fire agency was spending millions in overtime to supplement Falck because the company was consistently understaffed. 

In its lawsuit, the city demanded Falck cover those overtime costs despite recouping much of those costs by billing patients and insurance plans for those services, a months-long investigation by Salem Reporter established. 

The company said in its court filing that the city’s claims lacked detail and were not backed by evidence.

“The city unsurprisingly never sought to terminate the contract during Falck’s decade-long performance,” the motion said. “But now seeks to have its cake and eat it too, by belatedly pursuing these implausible claims after the end of the contractual term and despite the lack of any damages.” 

The city’s lawsuit alleges that Falck relied on the Salem Fire Department to respond to patients in need even when call volumes were not “extraordinarily high.” It also said the company didn’t meet staffing requirements, didn’t respond to calls quickly enough and failed to get patients to the hospital quickly. 

It claimed Falck owes $750 for each instance between Jan. 1, 2022 and Feb. 15, 2025 that the company failed to staff enough medics. The fines add up to almost $7 million.  

Those fines were never levied on the company and Falck officials told Salem Reporter in August that the lawsuit was the first they had heard of such fines. 

Falck’s attorneys accused the city of purposefully taking calls when it didn’t have to in order to cut the ambulance company out of the mix so it could bill patients and make more money.  

“While the contract allows the city to also deploy its own ambulances at times of unusual need, the city deployed its own ambulances even when Falck ambulances were available to respond so that the city could instead bill the patients for such services,” the motion said. “Despite preventing Falck from responding so that it could instead generate revenue for itself, the city now seeks to double dip by claiming “damages” supposedly arising from its decision to circumvent the contract by allocating resources in an effort to maximize its own revenues.” 

Falck disputed that the contract required it to pay fines each time it failed to staff ambulances. Instead, the company’s filing said the provision only applied to “incidents where Falck failed to staff an ambulance actually responding to a call.”

The company said in its filing that the city’s attorneys “suggested a willingness to voluntarily dismiss the negligence claim, which was included in an effort to trigger insurance coverage, but then later indicated that” it was unwilling to do so. 

The motion goes on to claim that the city’s complaint failed to identify what specific provisions the company allegedly breached, outline the company’s performance requirements, or explain how Falck specifically failed to meet those requirements. 

Instead, Falck said the city deployed generic allegations that make it difficult for the company to understand what is being claimed. The company also said some claims couldn’t be pressed now because the legal deadline for doing so had passed.

RELATED COVERAGE: 

Claiming ambulance hours fell short, city lawsuit seeks millions from Falck

City wants ambulance service to pay overtime costs already covered by others

Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790.

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