Board votes for OCH to respond to county owned buildings

OKTIBBEHA COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI)- A new ambulance service in Starkville is looking to expand its operation, but the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors is pumping brakes.

It was just a few months ago when Starkville city leaders voted to create a new EMS district and hire Pafford Medical Services to provide ambulance services within the city.

However, there are multiple county owned buildings within the new EMS district including the county jail.

According to the contract, if a 911 call comes in at any of the county buildings, Pafford is responsible for transporting them to the hospital since it’s within the city limits.

This also means if Pafford were to transport an inmate, county residents would have to pay an additional fee. A fee the board thought was unnecessary, which led to Monday night’s vote.

During the meeting, the board voted to have only OCH Regional Medical Center respond to calls being made to all county owned buildings.

“The ambulance service through OCH is subsidized through taxpayer dollars and when they come to pick up an inmate in the jail that needs to be transported, if we did not allow OCH to do that, we actually would be charging the taxpayers twice because they would be receiving a bill from Pafford,” said Bricklee Miller, District 4 Supervisor.

“I think there is potential for a partnership there between us, the county, OCH, whoever the parties are that’s in this agreement, said Freddie Parker, Director of Operations for Pafford Medical Services. “We need to come together to make it happen.”

“We really are just concerned about the patient’s safety,” said Michael Hunt, OCH EMS Director. “At this point we just want to try to work together and make sure that we take care of our patients of this community and not just the city, but also for the county and the university, so whatever we have to do to make sure we do that we’re going to do.”

County leaders said there are still a few other gray areas concerning ambulance services provided by Pafford. However, the parties plan to have another meeting to iron out the details and make sure everyone is on one accord.