New Kentucky Board Members Greeted by $500,000 Ambulance Need

Feb. 26--The four out of 10 members of the Barren-Metcalfe County Emergency Medical Services board of directors who are new did not get eased into their roles.

At the board's first meeting of the year Wednesday, members were asked for approval for the staff to prepare specifications so it can advertise for bids for new ambulances that would cost roughly half a million dollars.

Mike Swift, director of the ambulance service, said most of the trucks have in excess of 150,000 miles on them.

Chairman Howard Garrett, who is Edmonton's mayor, asked how much a new ambulance costs, and Swift told him approximately $120,000.

Tim Gibson, assistant director of the service, said his goal was to advertise for bids and have the bids ready to bring before the board at its next regular meeting in April. Last year, the seven trucks the service has went approximately 285,000 miles, which was 35,000 more than the prior year.

"We have got to have trucks," he said. "This ambulance service needs four brand new trucks, and we need them this fall."

Two are in the shop now, Gibson said, so there is no backup if something happens with any of the other five, and the diesel mechanic who had been used before is no longer available and it's been difficult for them to find another reliable one.

"I know it's a lot of money," he acknowledged. "We went a couple of years and hadn't bought any, and it's catching up with us."

He asked about the possibility of borrowing from funds in reserve from the Metcalfe County taxing district that provides the revenue for that county's portion of the service's deficit funding. Metcalfe and Barren counties each cover 30 percent and the City of Glasgow and T.J. Samson Community Hospital each put in 20 percent. The other contributors' money comes from their general funds.

Gibson suggested that tapping into that reserve and making payments back to it would be a better option than getting a regular loan and paying interest, even if it's through the Kentucky Association of Counties.

Office manager Nancy Jolly said two trucks they have now will be paid off in November, and the last payments for three more will be in various times in 2016.

Glasgow's new mayor, Dick Doty, a new member of the board, along with Barren County's new judge-executive, Micheal Hale, was looking over the maintenance budget and said a larger platform truck rather than the 1-ton the service usually gets would be more expensive, of course, but Doty asked whether it would last longer.

Physician and board member Kyle Kiser asked, "We're going to be buying new ones when the old ones aren't paid for yet?"

With that being the case, he suggested the possibility of leasing the next ones.

Hale said he liked the idea of leasing.

"I don't want to see the ambulance service struggle, because we have to have an ambulance service," he said, "but we have to get down to nuts and bolts here."

Barren County Magistrate Carl Dickerson suggested asking for bids on one, two, three and four vehicles to see what kind of price break was available for the higher quantity, and Swift said that was an excellent idea.

Doty asked whether it would be beneficial to ask for a presentation from an ambulance manufacturer, weighing the options of different sizes, spreading out the purchases over more years and leasing versus buying.

Garrett appointed a committee of board members -- Hale, Metcalfe County Judge-Executive Greg Wilson, Dickerson and nurse practitioner-paramedic Joe Middleton -- to further explore the possibilities and report back to the full board. Swift is to connect them with the manufacturer.

In other business:

• In 2014, the service responded to 7,409 calls originating in Barren County and 1,162 in Metcalfe County, for a total of 8,572, which Swift said was the largest number of runs in the 40-year history of the service.

• Garrett plans to call a special meeting before the regular April meeting for updates on some of Wednesday's agenda items for which more information was needed.

Those topics include:

1) Proposed contracts with certain major insurance providers, such as Anthem and Humana, to become considered an in-network participating provider again. The service had done this in the past, but the billing company it hired had believed it would be better to not participate, so the the board let the contracts drop, office manager Nancy Jolly explained, primarily for the sake of the new members. It has not worked out well for several reasons she and Swift provided.

2) Options for a linen service. Swift said the service has been leaving its linens -- sheets, pillow cases, blankets and towels -- with the hospital, which would take care of getting them cleaned at no charge, but he has been informed it can no longer do that because of laws intended to prevent transactions that could be perceived as getting a financial incentive to take patients there. The hospital could still do it, Swift said, but it would have to charge for the service. One estimate the hospital gave was $60,000 a year, he said.

Glasgow Mayor Dick Doty made a motion, which passed unanimously, to advertise for bids for the service to get an idea of the pricing and go from there.

Copyright 2015 - Glasgow Daily Times, Ky.