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

When Salem’s private ambulance company ran short of crews in recent years, the city Fire Department stepped in to send its own medics, often at overtime rates.

The city is now demanding Falck Northwest cover those costs despite getting payments from insurers and government health plans for some of those costs, an investigation by Salem Reporter has found.

Salem city officials wouldn’t address the apparent effort to get paid twice for the same work. They wouldn’t provide information about those outside payments. Asked again recently, officials insisted that the news organization would get that information only by submitting a public records request.

Salem Reporter’s investigation raises other questions about the city’s claims in the suit in Marion County Circuit Court that seeks millio