By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The Carter County Emergency Ambulance Service Board met for its regularly scheduled meeting on October 21, to discuss regular business. The board heard from director Tim Woods who discussed ongoing grant applications, especially those concerning funds from the Opioid Abatement Fund. The challenges with those funds, specifically, Woods said, was that they were geared more toward abatement rather than treatment.
Grants awarded through the Opioid Abatement Fund (OAF) have regulations that prevent the funds being used for anything other than abatement. Even if an agency to a large degree involves drug related services, such as responding to overdoses, those funds are not available to them unless they are providing an abatement service.
“There are so many restrictions,” Woods told the board. “After talking to them I found out that I would have to create a drug related program to prevent people from getting on drugs. And not to recoup the money we have spent out because of drugs.”
Woods said that in order for him to establish such a program it would require the hiring of additional personnel and other costs associated with such a program on the speculation that he would be able to recoup that investment from the OAF.
The Emergency Ambulance Board’s inability to qualify for those funds is a source of frustration, Woods said. Each month there are expenditures related to drug use such as emergency calls and treatment, some of which includes the use of Narcan, a medicine used to reverse opioid overdoses. There are groups that donate Narcan for emergency use. However, due to government regulations on the strength of dosage they are allowed to use, the ambulance service is unable to accept any donation of the life saving drug from other organizations such as drug treatment facilities.
Narcan isn’t unique in this type of regulation. Other medicines such as insulin are also strictly regulated. In the case of an individual’s death who had been on insulin, any remaining medication whether opened or not was not allowed to be used if donated or even purchased. The medicine in question cannot even be reinspected and reissued, Woods said, but according to current law must be destroyed.
Another issue Woods brought before the board was the growing number of calls he has received for transport of patients who use wheelchairs. Most transportation of individuals in wheelchairs requires a special vehicle which the ambulance service does not currently operate.
“I have had people call the office for wheelchair transport, and I have had to turn them down,” Woods said.
Resolving the issue, Woods said, would necessitate the purchase of a wheelchair van. He said he was currently looking into the cost and availability of such a vehicle due to the growing need in Carter County. Medical transportation is a part of the services the board offers. But in order to legally transport individuals who require the use of a wheelchair – and for those individual’s insurance to cover the cost – the vehicle must qualify for such transportation under current regulations.
Woods said that he has not completed the necessary research on the wheelchair van, but when he does he will present an analysis of cost to the board.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
