Court considers 911 contract and life-saving equipment

A 911 agreement with Allegiance Mobile Health and purchasing automatic electronic defibrillators for the courthouse led the special meeting of the Shelby County Commissioners Court held Monday, Sept. 30.

Justin Cude, Vice-President of Allegiance, addressed the court on behalf of the ambulance service in its desire to have the 911 contract with the county renewed.

“As you know, we’ve been here since 2018. We took over for CarePlus when they were having some different issues and we’re just trying to clean up the contract,” Cude said.

“Mr. Price has looked at this contract and read it. He thinks it’s a pretty good contract,” County Judge Allison Harbison told the court.

“I reviewed the contract itself, it’s fine. I think it’s kinda standard fare using these particular instances. Three year contract, renews on a year to year basis. After that it’s cancelable by either party on 90 days notice. There’s some other provisions in case it needs to be canceled in an emergency situation,” County Attorney John Price commented.

The contract calls for one station with two ambulances and has provisions for an additional station if it should be deemed necessary, according to Price. Cude noted that 80 percent of the service’s call volume was from the Center area, leading to it’s station being located there.

Transport fees were also reviewed as part of the consideration of the contract.

“For the jail EMS responses, it’s a $300 flat fee and $5 per mile will be added to the base rate for inmate transports outside of the county,” Harbison pointed out.

Tom Bellmyer, Comm. Pct. 4, inquired about the per mile charge which was listed as $35 a mile. Cude confirmed that was the correct charge for private pay patients.

“Medicare and Medicaid kinda dictate what we cannot charge below, so we have to come up with a fee schedule, as a rule, that kinda matches theirs,” he explained. “Most of your insurance is not gonna pay $35 a mile. They pretty much dictate what what we get paid, but this is our fee schedule for the rural markets.”

After further discussion, the court approved entering into the contract with Allegiance.

The court considered the purchase of three automatic electronic defibrillators (AEDs) for the courthouse, one for each floor. The matter had been discussed at the previous week’s meeting, but no action was taken at that time. Part of the discussion, according to County Treasurer Ann Blackwell, was if three devices were needed.

“I think we do and the reason is, if we have an incident it’s readily available, it’s right here. Whether you’re up on the district court floor or here on this floor or down on the ground floor,” Bellmyer asserted. “You can have an incident on the third floor and now you gotta run back down to the ground floor (if the county only purchased one device). I just think it’s no different than having a first aid kit in your truck. It’s something that we need.”

Bellmyer also noted that the devices are relatively expensive.

After discussion, the court voted to purchase three AEDs at a cost of $1,365 each.

Members of the Texas Extension Education Association presented the court with a ceremonial check denoting the monetary value of the group’s volunteer work for various county organizations. The donation is a combination of the hours the members spent working for TEEA and driving to and from meetings and money donations to 4H and other projects In commissioners’ reports, Roscoe McSwain, Comm. Pct. 1, noted progress on road repairs.

“We’re still making oil sand. We’re so far behind this year, but, thankfully we’ll have good hot weather this week and hopefully, next week,” he said. “Probably next two weeks, we’ll wind down on the oil and start working on FEMA. We’re doing good.”

Bellmyer gave an update on the Huber water well.

“The test well has been drilled. The equipment has been pulled off, they’re going to drop a temporary pump in the well this week,” he said. “They’ll pump some water and send it off to TCEQ for approval and that’ll give them some more data and then they’ll come back and do the main well.”

In other business, the court approved the weekly expenses.