Abilene Reporter-News
TAYLOR, Texas — Faced with losing MetroCare as a rural emergency responder, Taylor County is not in panic mode yet.
“I believe the solution is out there, and obviously you do, too, or you wouldn’t be here today,” County Judge Downing Bolls told a group of rural volunteer fire chiefs and emergency responders who gathered at the courthouse Tuesday afternoon. “We’re looking at everything. The longer we wait, the fewer options we’re going to have.”
Bolls and Commissioner Stan Egger were at the meeting, precipitated by MetroCare’s decision to stop serving rural areas of Taylor County. Metro-Care has provided ambulance service for Abilene since 2005, but was asked to reduce its response times this spring after a committee chosen by the City Council had recommended moving the emergency response service to the fire department.
In June, the city announced it was staying with MetroCare but was going to work on improving response times.
Egger said MetroCare has not given a date that the company would stop serving the rural area. MetroCare Chief Operating O-cer George Knupple said Tuesday MetroCare wants to give the county as much lead time as possible.
Egger said the frustration with the problem comes from the fact that the county has not had to pay for emergency service because MetroCare has served as a secondary responder and, in some instances, a first responder in the rural areas of the county.
“I’m not upset with the city and I’m not upset with MetroCare,” said Egger. “We had such good service for so long and you want to continue it.”
The expense of adding an ambulance to the county budget to serve rural Taylor County would be prohibitive, Egger said.
“It’s going to be very diff icult for Taylor County to come up with $400,000 for an ambulance service,” he said.
The cost of supplying an ambulance for the rural part of the county would be about $360,000, said Ross Bradley, chief operating off icer for Guardian EMS, who was at the meeting.
The areas of the county that are the biggest concern are the areas for which MetroCare is the primary responder. Those areas include Tye, Potosi, View and Highway 277 south of Abilene. Bolls said 89 percent of the population in Taylor County lives in Abilene, but that Abilenians are affected because many of them travel the county roads.
“You can get in some areas out near Shep where you’re on your own,” he said.
Elm Valley Fire Chief Gary Young agreed.
“It isn’t our citizens having wrecks out there, it’s people from Abilene,” he said. “And they’re bad ones, because of the speed.”
Young, who said he would like to see the city and county work together to come up with a solution, said the strides the volunteer organizations had made over the past 20 years were impressive. “We’ve had excellent advances over the past 20 years,” he said. “We don’t have to say ‘pardon me’ to anyone. The level of care we give is the equal that you’d get in Abilene. We just don’t want to back up any.”
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