Board discusses ambulance service
The status of ambulance service readiness in the county was one of the topics at a recent meeting of the Marshall County Board of Supervisors.
District 3 supervisor Keith Taylor requested a report of responses by the CareMed ambulance service and the days when there were only two of the required three ambulances in service.
Taylor said if the contracted number of ambulances are not available the county should start its own service or charge back for days when an ambulance was out of service.
“If they can’t get staffing, I don’t think we will be able to do any better,” said 911 director Stacey Reed.
Taylor said the fringe benefits should make ambulance jobs more attractive than those who work for a provider.
“They don’t have benefits,” Reed said.
“If there is a shortage of drivers, somebody is going to be short somewhere,” said District 1 supervisor Charles Terry.
District 5 supervisor Ronnie Joe Bennett said when an ambulance is sitting for hours at the hospital waiting for a patient to be received, there is nothing the ambulance provider can do about that.
Reed said there have been days when the third ambulance, as contracted through CareMed, was out of service.
Taylor said this has happened before and he wonders if that is a pattern.
Reed said there were 10 days in a reporting period when the third ambulance was not available. She provided a report from CareMed.
Taylor said he would like the reports to come directly to the board of supervisors without having to request them.
“I don’t want to wait until something bad happens,” he said. “Our contract calls for five and they can’t even take care of three.”
Reed said when a person has to keep calling for an ambulance and there is not one available, her dispatchers get “jumped all over and then y’all (supervisors) get fussed at.”
“We need to make sure our bookkeeping is right so we are not paying for ambulances that are not there,” Taylor said. “I hope we address it.”
Reed said she was told the third ambulance would be running March 1.
“We need to figure out a formula of how much we are going to charge back when they are out of service and how to charge it back to the ambulance service,” said District 1 supervisor Charles Terry.
Board attorney Amanda Whaley Smith said the county can charge back for any ambulance that is not in operation.
“I don’t want somebody to die because the contractor was not staffed with an ambulance,” Taylor said.
Reed said the contractor provides her a report if she asks for one.
District 4 supervisor George Zinn III said the provider has been under contract for three months and has not held to its contract.
Reed said COVID-19 has affected service, meaning staffing a crew is difficult at times. Staffing shortages have been a problem in general, she said.
Taylor said the county has budgeted $3.5 million to provide ambulances and stations.
The county is currently under contract to pay about $600,000 for three ambulances, according to chancery clerk Chuck Thomas. That number jumps to over $1 million if a fourth is provided, he said.
And the extra money is in the budget to open an ambulance station in each supervisor’s district. The one in Mt. Pleasant will soon be ready to open in the old Head Start Building, where a county deputy may also be stationed.
Presently, the county has a station in Byhalia on Highway 309 North and one in Holly Springs on Highway 178 East.
In other business, travel for hazmat training for dispatchers was approved.
Reed requested approval for travel for herself and one employee per shift to get hazmat training. She said staff members have to be trained to handle hazmat calls.
Reed said dispatchers have to know what specific questions to ask when a hazmat call is received. They are handled differently than regular calls, she said.