MEMS Executive Director Jon Swanson said coverage around the county will decline in April without subsidies from the county.
County Judge Preston Scroggin said that the Budget and Finance Committee has not made a formal decision on subsidies to MEMS, but he expects them to consider the issue before April.
Scroggin said MEMS and the county will go into contract negotiations soon, but he did not know if the committee would grant MEMS the $55,000 subsidy the company asked for.
"It's going to be tough because we're stretched pretty thin," Scroggin said of the county's budget. "I haven't sat down with the Budget and Finance Committee, but they are still considering it."
MEMS is the predominant ambulance service to the county aside from a few place that provide EMT service on the side. "Quitman EMS provides service a little bit to the northern part of the county, but that's about it (aside from MEMS)," Scroggin said. Swanson said "Right now there's two trucks 24-hours a day in Faulkner County. One is just south of Greenbrier and one is at the Liberty Fire Station (near the 8-mile store, halfway to Vilonia). We're in FEMA trailers in both locations so we've saved money on rent. And we've been operating very successfully. And the system as a whole in Conway and Faulkner County is working perfectly."
If MEMS doesn't receive any assistance from the county, Swanson said, "we're going to have to reduce the coverage to one truck 24-hours a day and the other truck 14-hours a day ... so we run the risk of slower response time in the county as a result."
Swanson said that subscriptions to the MEMS Alert program would help offset the amount of subsidies that MEMS is asking of the county and possibly delay when MEMS would have to reduce county coverage.
"What the MEMS Alert piece of this was: it was a win-win, now it's a win-win-win. It's a win for the individual family because if subscribing, they need an ambulance they don't have to worry about its costs. It's a win for MEMS because it does return a certain amount of revenue, but the win for the county is that we're going to take a certain amount of revenue, that surplus revenue, and use it to offset the subsidy. So the benefit to the community is really two-fold. They don't have to worry about the bill and whatever net revenues we realize will be used to reduce any subsidy requests because we are a non-profit, nobody's taking money out of this and that the whole point of this."
Swanson said the MEMS Alert subscription program "started 20 years ago nationwide. It's not insurance, but it is a subscription program," that allows residents to prepay for ambulance service for themselves or their households Swanson said in an interview Tuesday. "The given amount in our case is either $60, 70 or $80, depending upon existing insurance that you have." The program covers both emergency and non-emergency transport.
Because of the 1996 Medicare Balanced Budget, Swanson said that the medical industry as a whole has experienced cutbacks and ambulance services, in particular, have seen a decline in paramedics. Swanson said the company is short staff and that they were under budget by more than $4000 in salaries for 2007.
Swanson added that since they were short staff and under budget, MEMS "had to address something about pay and in doing that it meant that we had to go back in individual communities, like Conway and Faulkner County, and ask the question, 'How much money does it cost to operate here, how much of the small amount of overhead do we assign there,' and compare that to the revenues that we forecast. And each of the communities where there is a (negative) number, that number is the subsidies. And that was after a small pay raise."
(Staff writer Monica Hooper can be reached by e-mail at monica.hooper@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1266. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
