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PARKERSBURG - The Wood County Commission will look at laying a long-term foundation to be able to provide ambulance service to citizens well into the future.
Officials with WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center recently asked the commission to provide $1.7 million to the hospital to support the emergency medical service they provide to the area. Commission President Blair Couch said that requested financial information from the hospital is expected to be provided early next week.
Commissioners have reached out and met with people involved in the ambulance business as well as other county officials who provide funding for emergency medical service to see how they handle it and the costs involved, he said.
Officials have felt some of the initial figures from Camden Clark were high and wanted additional information about how those figures were determined.
"The more we look into this, almost every county (in West Virginia) has an emergency services levy they have to pass every four years," Couch said.
Some counties have levies that included money for law enforcement, 911 centers, local health departments and fire as well as ambulance service. Officials discussed possibly doing away with the county fire fee if that money could be made through a levy.
If the hospital couldn’t support emergency ambulance service anymore, the county would be tasked with setting something up, which officials have said would take time.
Officials have talked about different options they might have, including an ambulance levy, an up-to-1% sales tax countywide that could be divided among all emergency services or an ambulance fee, charged per house and business.
"The bottom line is we want to have an ambulance service in place, and we do not need to be smashed into the wall to provide that service right now," Commissioner Jimmy Colombo said. "We are not against people making money and covering costs, but some of these numbers are huge compared to other areas of the state. That is not good."
Couch said they will have another meeting in the near future with hospital officials.
"We are trying to come up with the best plan going forward," he said.
Couch reiterated that local residents have not had to pay for ambulance service as taxpayers for many years.
Without a levy or fee in place, he said, the county would end up having to cut other departments to come up with the funding needed to pay for ambulance service. Couch said the county has benefited from having a robust sheriff's department, 911 center, prosecutor's office and more that have served the needs of local residents.
"We are proud that we have an ambulance service doing the right things now," Couch said. "We are not getting complaints about their service through the 911 Center."
County officials want to maintain a high level of emergency medical service throughout the area, he said. However, whether it is provided by the hospital or if the county has to set up its own ambulance service, the work needs to begin now on how it will be provided and funded.
"We need to have a master plan where we, over time, have our own ambulance service and how we go about that without causing the property owners in the county a lot of grief," Couch said.
Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com.