VIENNA — The Maries-Osage Ambulance District (MOAD) has agreed to do the blood draws at the Maries County Jail pending the development of protocols for it and more training for district staff.

In discussion at the March MOAD board meeting, Administrator Brian Opoka said he spoke with Maries County Sheriff Chris Heitman about it. The sheriff told him if MOAD doesn’t want to do the blood draws and he has to send someone from his staff to get trained to be a phlebotomist, then his office will charge MOAD for dispatching out the ambulances. 

Opoka said he had tried multiple times to get in contact with the sheriff prior to this and the sheriff never responded to his emails. 

Board President Don Lanning said the agreement between MOAD and the sheriff’s office has been they would dispatch for MOAD and the ambulance district would transport their prisoners. Office Manager Carla Butler said when she previously worked at MOAD, the sheriff’s office had 12 calls a year the district would do for free and then after that number was reached the sheriff’s office was supposed to be billed. Opoka said the ambulance has been to the jail eight times since the last board meeting.

MOAD crew member Crissy Via told the board some of the problem is the time it takes to do a blood draw when a judge ordered there be three consecutive blood draws at 15-minute intervals. Also, she said the tubes the sheriff’s office provides to draw the blood are expired and then the ambulance has to transport the prisoner to the hospital because of the expired tubes. She informed the board there have been times when she was the only paramedic in the district and she was tied up with jail blood draws when there was an advanced life support (ALS) call pending. Because of it another district had to come in and take the ALS call. 

Opoka said he has a meeting set up with the sheriff to discuss the situation. He said the ambulance gets dispatched to the jail a lot for treat and no transport calls. Several insurance companies are allowing ambulance providers to charge for this type of call. 

Opoka said the person drawing the blood has to be a paramedic and there always is a paramedic in the MOAD district.

The board discussed the issue and made a motion for Opoka and the sheriff to discuss the situation and to let the sheriff know MOAD is working on getting the blood draws put back into the protocols and will be getting some training on blood draws for employees. The board approved the motion. 

In other business at the MOAD March meeting:

• In old business, Opoka said he is going to resubmit for the Gary Sinise Grant Foundation for the power load system for the ambulances.

• Opoka said he contacted the Phelps Health Medical Group in Vienna about putting together a physical for them to do what is within the job description. He sent a job description for the paramedics and EMTs. 

• Opoka said he’s almost finished with the 46-page cost report required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services  (CMS). It has to be sent in by May 1.

• The administrator said if they run out of Covid-19 tests when the current ones expire, they’ll have to put in a request for another box.

• In the financial report, February income was $26,324.32 and total expenses were $41,100 for a negative net income of $14,775.68. 

Of the income, $1,708.31 was from Maries County taxes, $739.99 from Osage County taxes, $7,685.10 was from service fees, $16,173.47 from sales tax, and $17.45 from interest. 

Opoka said the services fees are down because a lot of people’s deductibles started over at the first of the year.

• The district’s medical director affiliated with Mercy sent out new protocols to all the administrators, asking them to look over and make modifications. They should be released to the district in April. When Opoka gets them he will email them to the board to look over. The protocols are more extensive than previously.

Board member Laura Stratman asked if the employees will have something to look over before the new protocols are put in place. Opoka said he will put them out for the employees to look over for a few weeks. Then they will sign a paper saying they studied and understand them. Also, those employees who are not on the schedule regularly Opoka will reach out to them about it and they can read them and sign the paper before they work a shift. 

• Opoka reported the monthly response statistics. In February the average response time for when crews are dispatched to when they arrive on scene was 8.2 minutes. The average time on scene was 18.9 minutes, and the average arrival time at the hospital with the patient was 49.5 minutes.

• A person with Allstate reached out to MOAD about supplemental insurance policies similar to AFLAC. The company offers a few different policies such as accidental, cancer and critical illness. Opoka said a drawback is the policies are a payroll deduct and it would be an issue for the employees who don’t work enough to pay for their premiums. The district may then have to bill the employees. The board discussed it and asked Opoka to see if the employees are interested in this.

• Opoka told the board the workers compensation insurance premium through Missouri Rural Services (MRS) has doubled since last year. In 2020 the district paid $16,165 and this year’s bill is $30,527. Opoka said the district had two workers comp claims from last year and has had three additional claims since then. There is still an employee out of work on a workers comp case. The premium is due March 20.

Stratman suggested shopping around. Butler said if they have open claims they can’t. Board Vice President Steve Maxwell said they can do a review process to see why it doubled. Opoka said the higher price is due to the claims the district had. “We really can’t afford this,” Maxwell commented. Board member Laura Miller said she was surprised the premium has doubled. Opoka said before this the cost of the insurance has been going up about 10 percent each year. 

• The good news is MOAD’s Freeburg Base has been paid off. At the beginning of March the district made the final payment of  $14,230.18.