Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
P. O. Box 3711
204 Broad Street
Martinsville, Virginia 24115
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Friday, August 28, 2009
By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer
The task force that recommended creation of an EMS commission to oversee volunteer rescue squads in Henry County limited its specific ideas on the group’s duties and responsibilities.
“One of the things we did not want to do as a task force was to lay a plate full of duties on the commission,” Stuart Bowman, chief of the Collinsville squad, recently told the Henry County Board of Supervisors.
Rather, he said, the task force wants the commission, if approved, to develop in response to the squads’ needs and as its members see fit.
Bowman was among squad representatives and residents who served on a task force created to improve efficiency and effectiveness of county rescue squads. He said the task force hopes the commission would develop with a mission of ensuring squads are more consistent in their practices, and patients receive identical levels of care.
For example, three squads currently use soft billing to help offset operation expenses and provide incentives to volunteers, Bowman said of Collinsville, Ridgeway and Bassett.
Soft billing is when patients are billed for services but are not penalized if they cannot pay.
The Bassett squad started soft-billing in April. The Horsepasture squad is working to implement soft-billing, and Axton has decided it is not needed for now, according to Bowman and other speakers at a recent meeting of the Henry County Board of Supervisors.
Among the three squads currently soft-billing patients, none “are doing it the same way,” Bowman said.
The commission could address that by developing guidelines for all squads to follow, Bowman said. That would lead to consistency among the squads.
Marcus Stone, captain of the Bassett Rescue Squad and president of the Rescue Squad Association, said there also would be room for practices to differ among individual squads, because what works in one area of the county may not work in another.
Soft-billing “is an opportunity to have revenue that supports the operation of emergency services without taxing” residents, the task force recommendations state. Its effects on a patient’s insurance are minimal, and normally are not a factor in determining insurance premiums, according to the recommendations.
In short, soft billing is “not a burden on those that cannot afford insurance,” the recommendations stated.
To be effective, however, all squads should soft-bill, according to Bowman and other speakers. Currently, squads using soft-billing do not bill when answering calls in areas without it.
Although the proposed commission’s focus is intentionally broad, the task force also recommended granting authority in several areas, including assigning, reviewing and updating response territories to ensure all county residents are provided services by volunteer squads.
Chatmoss residents have not been served by volunteers since the Martinsville-Henry County Squad ceased operations last year, according to John Mitchell, who also served on the task force. Stone Ambulance, a paid provider, serves that area.
The commission also would review squad performance to maintain consistency; help squads identify and adopt practices that would be beneficial to all; coordinate purchases; and create a central storage system for disposable medical supplies, the recommendations state.
The commission would be a resource to collect feedback on services provided by squads and other emergency medical service agencies; develop a reaction/response time goal and support its implementation/modification as needed; explore and help implement recruitment and retention incentives for volunteers; provide and coordinate information to the squads related to supplemental staffing to fill service gaps and provide compensation; and create and implement policies for all secondary EMS providers (such as Stone Ambulance) operating as part of the county’s 911 EMS system, the recommendations state.
If supervisors agree to create the commission as proposed, its 10 members would be an equal combination of squad representatives and residents, Bowman and Stone said. |
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