Yuma County’s EMS Council is laying the groundwork to potentially create a special district as a funding mechanism for ambulance service in the county.
A meeting about the financial state of providing ambulance service was held Monday night in the Yuma Ambulance Building.
Representatives from the Yuma, Wray, South Y-W and Idalia ambulance services were in attendance, along with Yuma County Commissioners, the Yuma and Wray hospitals, City of Yuma and W-Y Combined Communications.
Yuma Mayor Tim McClung got the discussion going, providing background on Yuma Ambulance going from being its own Enterprise Fund to being absorbed into the city’s General Fund four years ago because it could no longer be self-sufficient. It is operating at an $850,000 deficit in the current budget.
Wray Ambulance also is operating at a deficit.
Yuma Ambulance’s budget this year is $1.2 million, Wray’s is $960,000, and Idalia and South Y-W (which operate with strictly volunteers) both operate on $60,000 to $80,000 annually.
Bruce Mann with South Y-W said it was broke two years ago, so went to the county for help. The commissioners responded with providing $60,000 to each of the four services.
Lower returns on service from insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, along with the move from volunteers to paid EMTs and paramedics, are driving up the costs of providing emergency service.
Deb Moellenberg with the Idalia Ambulance Service, noted that most volunteers are getting older, and there is going to have to be a way to start paying something.
Mann said most people do not even know ambulance services are not government funded, and every emergency service in the county, including volunteer fire departments, are in trouble.
The EMS Council, which has representatives from each ambulance service, is in the process of collecting five-years worth of data, such as number of calls, number of transfers, busiest days of the week and so forth.
The next step will be to create the framework for a special district, how to fund it, and educating the public before putting it before the voters.
McClung said a property tax would be the only way to have a broad enough tax base.
Mann said a property tax would never pass, so the EMS Council is for creating a countywide district and seek a countywide sales tax.
Commissioner Mike Leerar said there seems to be some reluctance from the Yuma and Wray services to cede some control. Yuma Ambulance Director Keriann Josh said she would have to see the potential savings first. Mann said there would be savings in the economies of scale, and would help stop duplication of what each service is doing independently.
It eventually was made clear that everyone is all on board to get something figured out.
Some numbers were thrown out about how much it would cost to run a countywide service. Moellenberg said the data collection needs to be completed before projecting costs.
John Everett, Chief Financial Officer for Wray Community District Hospital, shared his experiences of being involved in the creation of a hospital district in Texas. People in attendance were interested in what he had to say, and asked if he could help in some capacity with the effort.
There is an urgency in getting something done. McClung has said Yuma could be looking at cutting back services in the near future if nothing changes.
A three-year time frame was first thrown out. However, there was discussion about possibly being able to speed up the process a bit. Washington County has a countywide sales tax for health services, so it was mentioned looking at that district. There are other similar districts that have been or are being formed throughout the United States, so there is not a need to reinvent the wheel.
It was stressed more than once the importance of educating the public by any means available. It was said most people don’t think about ambulance service until they need it, and then it is expected it will be quickly available. Some noted it is quite a commitment and burden to be on-call and ready to go at the drop of a hat.
In the end, everyone in attendance agreed it was time to get moving on the process.
There will be another meeting on May 29.