VIENNA — The Maries-Osage Ambulance Board reconvened on April 8 following the election earlier this month.

The board currently has only five members instead of the usual six following the April 2 election. Eileen Smith ran unopposed to retain her seat representing Sub-District No. 3, but no one ran for the Sub-District No 6 seat formerly held by Victor Stratman. The board will need to appoint someone to the seat in the coming months. MOAD Administrator Carla Butler said she would have more information about filling the seat once both counties certified the election results.

The annexation of the area around Meta into MOAD passed with all the necessary groups of voters in the election earlier this month.

In recent months, the board has made decisions on the future of MOAD’s ambulances. The district is on waitlists for new ambulances that will not arrive until 2026. In the meantime, it has four ambulances. Two of the ambulances have experienced a variety of issues.

The board heard updates about ambulances conditions. The 2012 ambulance received a new motor. It also has new tires and brakes. The 1990 ambulance had a fuel leak while waiting for parts to repair the transmission.

Butler asked what the board would want to do if the district did not receive the grant that would help it pay for the new ambulances.

Board members agreed that the district needs at least one of the new ambulances. They decided to wait and see what happens with the grant before making any other decisions about new ambulances.

Butler asked the board what it would like to do about housing the extra ambulance now that all four are nearly in working order. She said ambulance crews had been going to the Meta area much more often than they had expected, and she asked if the agency should consider putting a crew in that part of the district.

Board members said Butler could gather more information about what it might take to buy the former COMM-Unity Ambulance base and get it into shape to station a crew in Meta.

“Then we have to figure out where we’re going to get money,” Board President Don Lanning said.

Board Vice President Steve Maxwell said calls to the Meta area may have been frequent recently, but the board had no way of knowing if that trend would continue. He said he would like to see statistics tracking calls to Meta before making a decision.

MOAD had applied for a grant to buy three new power cots, but it did not receive the grant.

Butler said she had contacted three companies about their offerings for report-writing software after employees had inquired about a new system. Currently, the district uses ImageTrend Elite for its report writing. AIM EMS Software & Services and ESO Solutions were the other companies that Butler contacted.

MOAD pays about $1,300 annually for ImageTrend Elite’s services. Butler said the company told her that what the district has now is the best the company has to offer. AIM does not include several key features.

EMT Leonard Reinkemeyer was at the meeting and talked about ESO’s services, which he has used while on staff at another ambulance district. He said the system flows in a way that makes it easier for staff to write their reports.

The cost to switch to ESO would be about $5,000 annually with a discount for the first year. The service would custom-build a program for the district to use.

Board member Laura Stratman motioned for the board to use ESO for its report-writing system.

“We’re spending a little more money, but in the long run we’re getting a better product,” she said.

The board voted to approve the purchase.

Another purchase the board approved during the meeting was the payment service PayGround. Before adopting the platform, the district could only accept credit card payments in person with a card reader that plugs into a phone. With the PayGround service, people can pay their bills to MOAD online or set up recurring payments. The cost of the service is $20 per month plus 3 percent of credit card payments or 1 percent of checking account payments.

MOAD’s income in March was $24,718.01 compared to $89,434.43 for expenses. Butler said an annual workers’ compensation insurance payment of nearly $28,000 contributed to the gap. The district is also still trying to catch up on billing.

One of the local schools had contacted Butler to find out if MOAD would be interested in participating in a summer work program that would bring a student in to help with administrative work.

The board asked if Butler would find it helpful. She said she would, but she would need to know the schedule because she does not always work in the office and the student could not be there unsupervised.

Butler said she had heard feedback from a patient who was very impressed by the care she received from a MOAD crew who helped her. Butler recognized Reinkemeyer and EMT Miguel Barros for being on duty at the time.

MOAD responded to 54 calls in March. Of those calls, 31 occurred in the Vienna zone and 23 were in the Freeburg zone.

The calls from the Vienna zone included two life-threatening emergencies, 15 urgent emergencies, 13 dry-run emergencies and one transfer. The calls from Freeburg included one life-threatening emergency, 15 urgent emergencies and seven dry-run emergencies.

The board received response time statistics during the meeting. The average time from a call to getting an ambulance en route was 4.06 minutes. The average time for an ambulance en route to arrive on a scene was 9.58 minutes. The average time from an ambulance arriving on a scene to leaving a scene was 26.07 minutes. The average time from an ambulance leaving a scene to reaching a destination was 38.80 minutes. The average time from an ambulance reaching its destination to arriving back in service was 111.43 minutes.

Recent standby events included a training session with Phelps Ambulance, CPR training with Vienna High School students, the VHS mock crash and AED training and blood pressure checks at the Vienna Senior Center.