Editor's note: Mayor Jerry Fannin is a member of the new Kentucky Board of Emergency Medical Services. 

Published Nov. 29 in the Paintsville Herald

Prestonsburg scraps ambulance service

By CHRIS McDAVID
Associate Editor, Paintsville Herald

PAINTSVILLE — As Paintsville officials consider ways to operate the city’s ambulance service without a deficit, a neighboring city scratched its ambulance service because an official there says it’s not financially viable without new taxes or state aid.

Prestonsburg’s ambulance service was dissolved earlier this month because it has operated in the red since it was started in 1995, Mayor Jerry Fannin said. Fannin said expenditures related to the ambulance service, including payroll, insurance, maintenance costs and supplies — have exceeded the revenues by about $200,000 over the last few years.

He also noted that revenues from insurance companies and federal programs, such as Medicaid and Medicare, are not dependable.

“Some of them are just not paying, period,” Fannin said, noting the city of Prestonsburg also has two private companies in operation. “Why go in the hole and take work from private ambulance services? If private services can do it and do just as good of a job, government shouldn’t be involved.”

Paintsville’s ambulance service continued to show a deficit this year, as it has since it was started in May 1996, and the city’s involvement with the service prompted a federal lawsuit that claims the city is attempting to monopolize the service in violation of federal antitrust laws.

The Paintsville ambulance service has lost about $125,000 in its first four years of operation, but Mayor Robin Cooper called the outlay of city funds an “investment” that will eventually be recouped.

The city is currently considering the purchases of two new ambulances and the expansion of service to allow for the transportation of patient’s to hospitals in larger cities.

Unlike Prestonsburg, there is just one private ambulance service in operation in Johnson County, and Cooper has said the city-operated system is a necessity. He is also convinced that the program will eventually begin paying it own way.

“It’s a great service if you can just break even,” Fannin said about Prestonsburg’s former service. “There may be a day when the state will supplement some of it. Then, maybe we can operate (an ambulance service) and make it work. It will take that — taxes or state supplement.”

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