EMS chief quits before he starts
Staff writer
Less than a week after hiring a new ambulance director, the county must begin again.
Hired April 7 to be county ambulance director, Kyle Burtch withdrew his acceptance soon after, officials confirmed last week. He has not responded to an email seeking comment on turning down the position, and county officials have no specified reason.
When Burtch, operations captain at Sedgwick County Emergency Medical Services, agreed to take the job April 7, he said he would move to Marion County.
Commissioners told him that they would consider adding Kansas Police and Fire retirement benefits for EMS, firefighters, and sheriff’s deputies.
Under the program, significantly larger contributions are made to employees’ retirement plans and they receive more generous benefits when they retire. County contributions would go from 9.7% to 24.67%
Burtch notified county administrator Tina Spencer within a week that he would not be coming.
“Mr. Burtch withdrew his acceptance of the position,” Spencer said. “We will start over.”
Burtch is the fifth ambulance director the county has lost in less than seven years.
Interim director Chuck Kenney resigned as full-time director in October, a year after he was hired to replace former director Kurt Hasart.
Kenney told commissioners he would remain on an interim basis until a new ambulance chief was found.
Hasart, who spent 10 months as director, resigned in September, 2023, while under investigation for not disclosing pending criminal charges against him when he got his Kansas license. He later lost his license.
Kenney was hired to be interim director after Hasart left, and later was appointed permanent director.
Kenney also was interim director after previous director Travis Parmley resigned in July, 2022, after weeks of contention and criticism of the department’s transfer policy for patients needing care at larger hospitals.
The transfer policy, which remains in effect, was that hospitals must make other arrangements for patients who needed to be taken farther than 60 miles from the county line. The county, with two full-time ambulances, would not take patients farther because that left county residents with only part-time ambulance attendants.
Parmley had replaced former ambulance director Ed Debesis, who was hired in 2016 and quit in September, 2018, after several months of contention with then-commissioner Dianne Novak.