Daily Independent (Ashland, KY)

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December 5, 2006

State: Lawrence residents can still call for ambulances

By ALLEN BLAIR

LOUISA — Lawrence County residents worried they can’t call for an ambulance after today need not fear, state officials said.

“There is a contingency plan in place that we can have ambulances there,” said Letch Day, regional administrator for the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services. “They’re not going to be without ambulance service.”

The board, which licenses ambulance providers, EMTs and paramedics, has been monitoring talks between Lawrence County officials and Tran-Star Ambulance Service, headquartered in Prestonsburg.

After STAT Ambulance Service gave up its license earlier this year, Tran-Star filed for an emergency state certificate of need to provide the service, the board said.

On Nov. 29, Tran-Star apparently presented a letter to the Lawrence County Fiscal Court giving the county seven days notice it would cease operations — at midnight tonight.

Details about that notice are sketchy.

Officials at county Judge-Executive Phillip Carter’s office said Monday residents would be cared for, but refused to comment further. Carter did not return phone calls, and magistrates could not be reached for comment.

Leaders of Tran-Star, a private company, had not returned phone calls by mid-afternoon Tuesday.

Lawrence residents calling The Independent about the situation expressed the most concern about whether or not an ambulance would be available today if they called 911 in an emergency.

Louisa Mayor Teddy Preston said Monday he had heard that same comment, but had not received firsthand information about the county’s situation.

“I am very, very concerned about it, too, about it not going out,” he said, pledging to do what he could do within his jurisdiction, that is the city, to see services maintained. “We are in very dire need of ambulance services.”

Preston said Tuesday he felt more at ease after hearing from a provider in talks with the county that Tran-Star would not leave until there was another service in place.

Day, of the Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services, could not confirm that, but said he met Monday with the county judge-executive and representatives from the county attorney’s office about backup plans.

“Part of our job is also to ensure citizens have an ambulance service,” he said, adding that the county is working with a couple of different providers.

“If, in a worst-case scenario, if Tran-Star pulls out at midnight, we have a contingency plan where we would bring another provider in where they would cover the EMS portion of it,” Day said, until either the fiscal court or another entity decides to operate it.

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