Starkville alderman will soon have to decide whether to bring in a private ambulance service provider for a proposed emergency medical service district, or work with OCH Regional Medical Center on the project after hearing presentations at Tuesday’s meeting.
OCH and Pafford EMS, a private, Ruston, Louisiana-based company, are vying to provide service to the district. The EMS District, which Fire Chief Charles Yarbrough introduced to aldermen in April, would allow up to three ambulances to be stationed at fire stations 1, 4 and 5, to allow faster response times throughout the city.
Ambulances currently dispatch from OCH for all city, county and Mississippi State University calls.
Yarbrough’s presentation for the district initially included a partnership with Pafford, which provides a similar service to several communities in central Mississippi. On Tuesday, aldermen heard presentations from both possible providers.
OCH Director of Emergency Services Michael Hunt, during a lengthy presentation to the board, said the hospital is determined to make the district work, if aldermen allow it.
“We don’t need anybody else to come in here and tell us how to do it,” Hunt said. “We can do it amongst ourselves.
“Let us try it for a year,” he added. “Why do we want to let someone else come in and try this for a year? … Let us try it for a year (because) everything’s already established. It’s not costing anybody anything.”
OCH currently has five ambulances, three of which are staffed 24/7. Hunt said four of the ambulances are regular “box” trucks, and one is a van. He said the hospital is currently working to add another ambulance.
Hunt said OCH is proposing to locate four ambulances in city fire stations, with a fifth available Monday-Friday for emergency situations. However, he noted those ambulances couldn’t only be obligated to respond to city calls.
“Guys, this is a community,” Hunt said. “It’s not just in the city. When you start fragmenting calls, if there’s two ambulance services here, both of us are going to be affected. And I believe when that happens, patient care suffers.”
City calls make up about 64 percent of OCH’s medical responses, Hunt said. While he said OCH would do its best to work with Pafford, should the city select the private company, he noted it would be hard for two services to viably provide service for the area’s call volume.
“There’s no way that two ambulance services are going to be able to break even with the call volume that we have in the city, county and university,” he said. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing situation. It’s a fine balance when you’re talking about a small area like we have.”
Hunt further noted that, even if Pafford comes in to provide service for the EMS district, OCH will maintain its transfer service to move patients from the hospital to other medical facilities. Without that, which he said is a way to offset costs of ambulance service, it would be “hard to make it.”
Hunt also said providing the service wouldn’t present any direct costs to the city, though he noted modifications may be needed at fire stations for sleeping space for the ambulance crews.
Pafford
Pafford Chief Medical Officer Mike Seymour said during his presentation his company will commit to response times of 10 minutes or less for 90 percent of calls.
Seymour’s presentation touched on a range of Pafford’s services, from the vehicles and technology it uses to community services it engages in the communities it serves.
Seymour said Pafford responded to 2,232 Priority 1 medical calls in Brandon — where it has run a service similar to what’s being considered in Starkville for three years — between April 15, 2017 and April 15, 2018.
He said the average response times for all of those calls was 7 minutes, 57 seconds. Seymour said the times include everything, with nothing excluded for what might normally be considered an exception.
“This is pretty tricky, because exceptions include things like inclement weather, being blocked by a train, address mismatch, if there’s more than so many calls going on in the district at any one time–the list goes on and on with exceptions,” Seymour said. “That is for all the calls without any exceptions. It matters not if we had an address mismatch, if it was an ice storm, it doesn’t matter.”
Seymour conceded that Pafford’s ambulance service might be more expensive than OCH’s for customers.
Hunt, during his presentation, said OCH’s basic transfer rate starts at $315 plus $11 per mile, while advanced life support (ALS) calls start at $600 plus $11 per mile.
For a private company, Hunt said, average basic transfer rates start at about $800, plus $16 per mile, and ALS calls start at $1,100 plus $16 per mile.
Seymour said the rates Hunt provided were “fair.”
“I don’t hear a lot of complaints about billing,” Seymour said. “I mean the service is just high. … I’m not going to sit here and make a lie — that was fairly accurate, what they portrayed.”
Pafford has also said that providing service wouldn’t cost the city anything.
Aldermen may take up a decision on creating the EMS district, and which provider to partner with, at the next meeting. Ward 2 Alderman Sandra Sistrunk said the break would give the board time to “sleep on” the decision and better think it over.
Ward 4 Alderman Jason Walker said he was thankful for both companies’ presentations and interest.
“I’d just like to thank very much representatives from OCH and Pafford for coming tonight and giving us a lot more information so we can hopefully make informed decision as we move forward that’s going to be impactful for everyone in our community,” he said.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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