County to keep Operation Life as ambulance provider
With a competing bid on the table, the Putnam County Commissioners voted Wednesday morning to keep Operation Life as the emergency medical service provider for the county.
The commissioners voted 3-0 to stay with the local non-profit provider at an annual cost of $400,000 for the next two years.
The competing bid from STAR Ambulance would have come with a lower price tag. The Crawfordsville-based, for-profit enterprise was offering a two-year contract with a one-time $120,000 fee up front, but no further costs.
While admitting that the economics of the STAR proposal were better, two of the commissioners cited uncertainty over the new provider as their deciding factor.
“How could two proposals be so far apart?” District 2 Commissioner Rick Woodall asked following the meeting. “You look at what we have invested in Operation Life and the ambulances versus bringing in the new guy — that’s an unknown.”
While STAR, founded in 1982, is not a new operation, the service remains news to Putnam County, having set up a base on the north side of Greencastle early this year in order to do transports for Putnam County Hospital and local nursing homes.
While providing similar services in the Crawfordsville area, STAR has also been the contracted EMS provider for Montgomery County outside of Crawfordsville, with the Crawfordsville Fire Department handling the city’s emergency ambulance needs.
In this capacity, STAR handles 600-700 EMS calls annually, company Vice President David Peck told the commissioners. Operation Life is expected to handle 3,200 EMS calls before the end of 2017.
District 1 Commissioner David Berry cited two examples he had found in Clay and Union counties of for-profit services going out of business and abandoning counties mid-contract.
“There are counties that have lost their providers mid-contract and left the counties in a muddle,” Berry said.
For his part, District 3 Commissioner Don Walton made clear multiple times during the meeting that he intended to keep things the same and stay with the long-time service provider.
“I think I’m satisfied where we’re at,” Walton said. “They’ve done a good job over the years.”
The original proposal from Operation Life had been for $400,000 in 2018, with a 10-percent increase built in for 2019.
Walton initially made a motion to accept OL’s bid as presented, but Woodall balked at the increase.
“I’m not comfortable with the 10-percent raise in the second year,” Woodall said.
“I’m not 100-percent comfortable with that either,” Walton said.
The motion was amended to $400,000 each year, which passed 3-0 before County Attorney Jim Ensley pointed out that the commissioners had approved a plan that had not been offered.
“Essentially what you’ve done is make a counter offer,” Ensley said.
Attention then turned to OL Executive Director E.J. Claflin, who initially said he would need to speak to his executive board.
However, when the commissioners indicated they needed an answer Wednesday morning, Claflin accepted.
At that point, Berry offered that the county would revisit the 2019 cost midway through next year.
Knowing that an increase in emergency medical costs was possible or even likely, the Putnam County Council prepared the 2018 county budget in accordance.
Of the $400,000 price tag, $250,000 will come from the Public Safety Local Option Income Tax (LOIT), while the other $150,000 will come from the county Hazardous Waste Fund.
EMS funding for OL had previously been just $80,000 annually, drawn from Hazardous Waste, with other costs handled as additional appropriations in recent years.
While a fivefold increase is certainly a shock to the system of the county budget, the $400,000 price tag compares favorably to a number of other counties Berry cited from his research.
When Clay County still had a contracted service, the fee was $290,000 while serving a population of 26,000. Daviess County pays $360,000 with its population of 31,000. Union County last paid $210,000 to serve 7,500 residents and Warren County pays $700,000 annually to serve 8,500 residents.
Fountain County, with a population of 17,000 — about 45 percent of Putnam County — pays $1 million annually.
These arrangements also come in a number of varieties — non-profits, for-profits, county employees and one partnership with a local hospital.
“That $400,000 is actually toward the bottom,” Berry said after the meeting. “It’s slightly less than counties similar in size.”
In searching for their final answer, the commissioners heard proposals on Wednesday from each provider.
“We don’t receive any money from Montgomery County,” Peck said. “We fund ourselves from the transports that we do.”
He added that STAR’s billing is performed in house, to which he credits its ability to turn a profit.
“Basically, I think that’s our reason for being able to provide services at such a low subsidy,” Peck said.
“We have 15 ambulances,” Peck said. “We staff eight a day. In addition to that, all of our management staff is state-certified.”
Peck estimated that three additional units would have been brought to Greencastle for EMS service. Woodall expressed his concern about balancing the county’s emergency needs with STAR’s transport commitments.
“The three ALS (advanced life support) ambulances would be dedicated to 911,” Peck assured him.
Peck also admitted that in the short term, STAR would have lacked the local infrastructure to have multiple stations that compare to OL’s stations in Bainbridge, Greencastle and Cloverdale.
“At the moment, we just have the one here in Greencastle,” Peck said. “With the short turnaround, we’d have to make due for now.”
Claflin opened his presentation by citing OL’s long history in the county.
“Operation Life is a communition institution since 1974,” he said. ‘The organization has dumped every penny back into the community.”
Claflin went on to talk about the difficulties of keeping up with the pay of other ambulance services as well as a current shortage of paramedics. He talked about it as a high-stress job in which the pay is not necessarily commensurate.
“The reason EMS providers flee the industry is that they realize that the grass is greener in some cases,” Claflin said.
With the contract awarded to his service, Claflin felt more assured of what OL can provide to the county.
“This added funding will allow us to staff the third ambulance with a paramedic full time,” Claflin said.
An additional $137,000 in funding, approved by the County Council in June, was supposed to take OL to this level of staff, but Claflin said they found those funds insufficient, providing enough to have the third ambulance in service for 12 hours each day of the week.
Now that the future of Operation Life is more certain, Assistant Director Eric Pitner was direct about what OL and its employees must now do.
“We’re going to to do our job,” Pitner said. “That’s the way it is.”