EDITORIAL: Ambulance Conversation Needed in Miss. County

Oct. 08--Adams County Supervisors were up in arms earlier this week after learning a county resident waited approximately 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive after being summoned.

Supervisors are correct that such a long delay should be unacceptable.

But in some ways, we get what we pay for in this regard. Now before all of the good, hard-working people who work at both local ambulance providers begin to crumple up the newspaper and throw it away, we're not suggesting they're cheap or not doing their jobs, quite the contrary, in fact.

Ambulance workers, just like police and firefighters, generally are underpaid and underappreciated -- until you need them.

The challenge is that in Natchez-Adams County, local government has long left ambulance services to their own devices, meaning although they provide a valuable, and vital, service, they mostly operate based on what the market can bear and what their owners can afford to do -- balancing coverage with profitability.

During times of average call volume that juggling act works out just fine and no one is worse for the wear, response times are reasonable and everyone is happy.

But a rare few times when things don't go as planned, the wheels fall off and truth be told, lives are on the line more than normal.

The county has explored other options in the past -- and perhaps it's time to study those options again. Some of the options used by other counties include the use of either an exclusive contract -- meaning only one lone provider handles all the calls, which will improve the company's profitability -- or having the city and county pay some kind of subsidy to offset the costs of increased ambulance staffing levels.

Either can be made to work, but they both require the community to collectively decide how much coverage we need and what we willing to spend. But it starts with a conversation.

Copyright 2015 - The Natchez Democrat, Miss.