Council requests more info

County council requested more information Wednesday about Jay Emergency Medical Service’s finances.
JEMS director Pat Frazee presented council with reports showing amounts billed, more than half of which has not been paid.
Of the $1.9 million billed in 2015, $769,670 has been paid.
A separate report on transfers in the last quarter of 2015 showed that of $133,195.20 billed for transporting patients to facilities other than Jay County Hospital, $83,642.65 is unpaid.
What council member Ted Champ wanted was a bit simpler: “Instead of having something 10 pages long, at the end of the year, can you go back four or five years, and show what your budget was and what your total expenses were for that year … profit and loss.”
After the meeting, auditor Anna Culy provided council members with a revenue and expenditure comparison showing JEMS has spent more than it has earned in two of the past four years.
Those losses outweigh its two profitable years.
Frazee said during the meeting the department is bringing in more money, but has spent more to do it.
“We’re taking transfers out, so you’re bound to spend more. If we’re going to take the runs we’re going to have the stuff we’re going to have to spend on,” she said.
Council member Gary Theurer asked whether all the transfers to other hospitals are emergencies, noting “my concern is JEMS was set up to be an emergency ambulance service.”
JEMS doesn’t make that determination, Frazee said. Doctors do.
“If they say it’s an emergency run, it’s an emergency run. We don’t have to think it’s emergency run and we don’t have to believe it’s emergency run,” she said.
The only trips considered non-emergency are those taking nursing home residents back after a trip to the hospital, Frazee said.
The problematic runs are those for patients on Medicare and Medicaid, council president Mike Leonhard said.
Medicare and Medicaid will pay JEMS a set amount, regardless of what the service bills them.
“I feel like I’m defending the EMS and it’s a service that’s needed in the county,” Frazee said. She noted other ambulance services in the area are unprofitable too.
Champ stressed that his request for more information was not a criticism of Frazee’s work.
“Don’t read between the lines. I’ve not been to a coffee shop, I’ve not listened to a bunch of people,” he said, referring to Frazee’s assertion that many of those discussing JEMS don’t know what they are talking about, “I’ve not made judgment on nothing. I’m just trying to educate myself.”
Frazee said the budget for JEMS has been frozen for a few years.
From 2015 to 2016, the adopted amount decreased slightly, from $1,237,539 to $1,230,466. But it rose to the 2015 amount from $1,095,748 in 2012, increasing each year.
“How long has it been since we’ve given her money for anything other than an ambulance?” council member Jeanne Houchins asked. “We haven’t.”
The department has been given $700,000 from the rainy day fund since 2010. An additional $44,098 in 2015 covered a paramedic’s salary and benefits.
In other business, council members Cindy Newton, Mike Rockwell, Bob Vance, Champ, Houchins, Leonhard and Theurer:
•Approved spending $17,800 in economic development income tax funds on a Butler Fairman and Seufert engineering study that will focus on retention ponds and water that comes into Millers Branch from the north. The county commissioners began a quest for a “comprehensive drainage plan” in July after several bouts of flooding.
•Agreed to spend about $24,000 in infrastructure money for updates to a computer system at Jay County Jail. The system records conversations between inmates and jailers and could be vital to fighting potential lawsuits, Sheriff Dwane Ford said.