Boyd County EMS busier than many others

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March 16, 2010

Responded to nearly 8,000 calls last year

Mike James/The Independent The Daily Independent Tue Mar 16, 2010, 11:19 PM EDT

Ashland — Boyd County’s emergency ambulances rolled on nearly 8,000 calls in 2009, a third more than would be expected given the population density, according to the director of the service.

The statistic, found in the 2009 activity report presented to county commissioners Tuesday, probably is indicative of the aging population in the county, said Boyd County Emergency Medical Service executive director Thomas Adams.

The report showed ambulances logged average response times of six to 10 minutes throughout the county. Times were somewhat longer for extreme outlying parts of the county, Adams said.

Of the 7,896 calls last year, the lion’s share — 5,247 — were answered by the Ashland station. Of the remainder, 1,842 were answered from Summit and 807 from England Hill.

The report also breaks down the dispatch records by fire district. Again, the biggest proportion of calls were from the Ashland district, and smaller concentrations in Summit/Cannonsburg and Catlettsburg/England Hill/East Fork.

The service uses the information to decide where to station its trucks , Adams said.

The average cost per run was $396.58. The average collection per call was $181.72. The average payment for patients covered by Medicare was $287.34, for Medicaid, $68.02, for private insurance, $227.89, and for private pay, $53.62.

The highest number of runs, 2,006, were for Medicare-eligible patients, followed by Medicaid, 1,779, and private insurance, 1,656. There were 784 private pay runs.

The service wrote off $2.6 million in fees, of which almost $2 million were adjustments to meet Medicare and Medicaid standard payments. That left $578,163 written off due to actual bad debts.

Revenue in the $3.16 million budget was about equally distributed between patient service income and taxing district income.

The service is operating with six late-model trucks, four of them staffed at a time. One of the trucks was put into service this week. There is an older backup truck as well. There are 38 staffers in the three stations.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

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