The Washington County Board of Supervisors approved a plan to add two new full-time employees to the Washington County Ambulance Service staff in order to better serve the needs of the area.

Ambulance Director Jeremy Peck presented a revised plan to use one of their existing third or fourth crew ambulance trucks as a Basic Life Support truck. A BLS truck would be used to transport patients to hospitals without requiring a paramedic on board. Based on the board’s suggestions last week Peck lowered the pay per hour for the new emergency medical technician hires from $39.41 an hour to the level four rate of $23.87 with $10 for on-call hours. Peck commented that this change doesn’t give him much “wiggle room” but that it is more realistic for how it’ll cost the county overall. He estimates the BLS truck will possibly average at 20 calls a week, and he believes it will benefit the service in being able to run more non-emergency transfers, bring in revenue, and put another truck on the street to help the others in the fleet with current call volume.

Peck emphasized that this plan does not represent an overall shift in the service structure, “We’re not here to become a transfer service. We have a duty and an obligation to our citizens when there’s an emergency we go, and I will always focus on emergency as my number one. This is just a good way to A, bring more people in, to have more options when we need staffing because somebody’s sick or somebody’s hurt. It also just helps the revenue in the end.”

This proposal also includes two part-time EMT hires, and job listings were posted on the county’s website, with a November 24th deadline. Peck expects the BLS truck to begin service sometime between December and January.