Pulaski County Emergency Medical Services had a busy year in 2017. Interim EMS Director Kyle McTiegue presented his year-end statistics to the county commissioners last week. “We ended up with 1,549 calls this year,” he said. “1,343 of them were ALS calls. 181 were BLS calls. We did 301 transfers. 233 of them were out of Pulaski Memorial, and roughly 70 were from other hospitals with our third crew.”
But he said those transfer numbers were impacted by staffing issues. “We turned down a total of 136 transfers. That’s a lot of transfers that we turned down last year because of staffing. Ninety-four of them were ALS transfers that we turned down. The reasons why they were denied: some of it is no crew hours, weight limits, and we didn’t have a crew. With that being said, that’s a lot of money that we lost because we didn’t have staff.”
McTiegue also said he’s been working with a company called Malcon to help the county collect unpaid Medicaid reimbursements from the federal government. “For 2015 alone, we’re going to see another $80,766 back,” he said. “Then that will go into the county funds.” He added that Pulaski County EMS billed about $106,000 between October 28 and December 7.
