IU Health Starke Hospital officials have agreed to wait at least until the second quarter of 2012 to sign a contract with a private ambulance service to provide emergency transfers from Starke to other acute care hospitals.
At issue was a plan that would have cost the local EMS $100,000 if it lost the Basic Life Support patients that it has been transferring in the past.
A Starke County Commissioner, Kathy Norem, who is the former CEO of Starke Memorial Hospital, now known as IU Health Starke Hospital, is in today with an update on a committee’s early efforts to evaluate the possibility of upgrading the county’s ambulance service to include paramedic service, also known as Advanced Life Service.
Is Starke County going to get out of the ambulance business? That was one of the questions several County Councilmen and one Commissioner attempted to answer this week.
Getting out of the ambulance business was only one of the proposals made in a session on upgrading the county’s ambulance capabilities to Advance Life Service (ALS) status.
