To the Editor,
Our EMS Ambulance Service, along with our First Responders, is critical to the quality of life for us and those who visit Tucker County.
The West Virginia EMS Coalition has made multiple requests for Medicaid rate increases over the years and those requests have been consistently denied.
Considering Medicaid’s reported surplus, and after more than 17 years without a rate adjustment, the Tucker County Ambulance Authority believes it is time that Medicaid take advantage of t heir surplus to grant ambulance services the urgently needed rate increase. Until that happens many ambulance squads will continue on a financial precipice with some having to close.
Tucker County is a rural county in one of the most rural states in the USA and has the second lowest population of all West Virginia counties. Fees received from the billing of Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance are not adequate to cover the costs incurred to provide ambulance service at the level Tucker County needs. Without supplemental funding from the county budget, revenue from the hotel/motel tax and the recently passed Ambulance Service Fee ordinance, ambulance service in Tucker County would be severely reduced. We must maintain emergency ambulance service; we cannot afford to be without it!
Our goal is to provide two 24/7 EMS stations in Tucker County to reduce response time, to hire more paramedics and provide our personnel with competitive wages in order to keep them in Tucker County. We need to be able to maintain equipment and purchase pharmaceuticals and other supplies that cannot be attained with adequate funds. We must support those we depend on for emergency life-saving care and compliment those whose daily efforts maintain a schedule that assures that care. We must appreciate their continuing dedication and efforts for us in this competitive environment.
More than 2800 of our neighbors have not yet paid the Ambulance Service fee for this year; that amounts to more than $140,000. We sincerely trust that all our citizens will join us in our efforts to maintain and improve our ambulance service by closing this financial shortfall by the deadline of March 1.
Thank you sincerely,
Terry Silk, Treasurer
Tucker County Ambulance Authority
