ashe

I guess Dung Beetle's never heard of palliative care, it's about making people as comfortable as possible during their final day's. Oh! But I forgot he's a Trumpoid and I'm talking compassion here, sorry.

Nursing homes are for the old and sick to die in not get specialized care. The only way you leave a nursing home is in a funeral van or hearse.

Some nursing home residents require a higher level of care in transportation than nursing homes provided. Yes Sullivan probably does need several level of equipped ambulances to properly serve our county.

Creek it sounds like the county and Sullivan need a convulsant ambulance instead of using a paramedic ambulance as a taxi cab. Its the nursing homes problem to get the old folks to the doctor and back to the home.

Well moma, that's why the rule was put in place. But that has nothing to do with local jealousy of someone succeeding.

I guess that 's what you get when you have a board that's predominantly republican.

The live in ashe county rule was put in contract to keep anyone from bidding except for one person. And taxpayers kept picking up the tab

The problem is Sullivan lives in watauga. They don't care he's an ashe native and only lives about 5 miles if that from the county line.

Well Pinocchio what's wrong with changing the system this way every penny could be accounted for. At least if they're going to do it on a contract conduct a thorough audit on the bidders. No wonder it's screwed up how d'ye bid on a contract for something that's full of intangibles? How d'ye know how many runs you're going to make and to where during the length of the contract.

Ashe county needs 4-5 ambulances when the public starts looking at number of calls the ambulances make , they need to first understand all the requirements of Medicare/Medicaid has for transportation of patients in nursing homes. That includes emergency and non emergency nursing home calls to go to doctors, lab work appointments. Taking patients home from hospital. Transporting out of town and back home. Don't forget that's a trip to take someone to winston and back home. A round trip to go bring them back home again. Add two high level paramedics, if needed, on top of that. That gets expensive. Where are people getting all the millions Sullivan is supposed to be making. What about all the millions the former owner made at taxpayers expense.

What charges Hankey? The county has a contract. They don't get invoiced monthly.

I would be very interested in how many calls they are transporting in and out of the county yearly.

My concern is not how the expenditures are arrived at but how they're justified. No cover ups for county a employees ineptness or handouts for some "entrepreneur."

That would be easy to obtain, all you need is a list of calls transported in county and out of county and you can do the math. Then subtract the million the county pays Sullivan.

Whether it's a private service or county I would like to be assured that a complete detailed report of charges and expenditures is submitted monthly, read out at the public commissioners meeting and made available to the media.

I agree. Truly spoken

Citizens should want the owner of the ambulance service to make money. Because if he's struggling and losing money, service will diminish. A successful owner is motivated to provide top quality service so to keep the county happy and to keep his contract. A county run system has no motivation to do either. The only motivation is for a county employed director to not make waves and maintain his job. Like any typical mid level manager.

Sullivan does, and should expect to make a profit, on ambulance service. Any business is expected to make a profit. But if county run, ashe county tax payers would not expect our county owned ambulance service to make a profit at our (taxpayers) expense. Taxpayers would expect the same service at a reduced price, even though it would be actually costing more because of increased employee cost. The only way to improve response time to outer regions of county is put bases in those locations. That would be very expensive but may be necessary in future. As ashe increasingly gets an aging population, more general non emergency transportation is going to be needed. Thus more ambulance units are going to have to be available to transport for non emergency transports.

Sullivan doesn't have to pay the same benefits the county would have to. It could be a breaking point.

The commissioners are lying through their teeth. Remember the complaints to them about the rescue squads not responding to transport because there were and are no units available?