Sunflower County’s ambulance service provider is now answering to county leaders after claims it failed to provide an ambulance for emergency calls for a portion of last Friday afternoon.
The Sunflower County Board of Supervisors invited MedStat to its third-Monday meeting to answer the allegations.
MedStat did not return The Enterprise-Tocsin’s repeated attempts to contact the company.
The allegation is that there were no ambulances available when an emergency call came in from an Indianola asthma patient shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday.
The assertion comes on the heels of a subsequent complaint by a MedStat representative that one of the county’s E-911 dispatchers was rude to ambulance service personnel, a claim that Sunflower County Sheriff James Haywood emphatically denies.
On Monday, Haywood told the board that he was there when the dispatcher made the call to MedStat and that she was only trying to get MedStat to admit they were unable to respond to the call,
“She got on them and made them admit that they didn’t have an ambulance,” he said.
Haywood said normally if a person dials 911 the calls can simply be transferred to the ambulance service but if the person calls the sheriff office’s number, as was the case on Friday, the dispatchers would have to physically call the company.
He said they also sent out the emergency tone for the first responders but none answered the call, so he consequently had to explain to the caller that, “Nobody was coming and they had to do what they had to do,” he said, and since they were less than a mile from the hospital it was best if they tried to get the patient there by private vehicle.
“This could have been tragic,” Haywood said.
County Emergency Management Director Ben Grant explained that first responders are not allowed to transport patients and in asthma cases they can only inquire if they have their inhaler and assist them in using it, but he would find out why they didn’t respond.
A MedStat supervisor sent an email to Grant around 7:30 p.m., on Friday, complaining about the rudeness of the dispatcher and that she failed to transfer emergency calls so Grant forwarded the email to Haywood because the dispatchers fall under his responsibilities.
Board President Glenn Donald asserted that he too has heard claims of MedStat not having ambulances available, but didn’t pursue it because he thought the person was, “Just talking” and he didn’t want anyone to think he was “Just picking.”
The county’s agreement with the service calls for the county citizens to never be without an ambulance. So, that prompted the question of whether all of the ambulances were on calls in the county or if they had been pulled from the county to service other areas.
MedStat’s contract, which was just renewed March 1, allows for them to provide services outside of Sunflower County as long as it does not hamper or interfere with their ability to provide services within the county.
The county is supposed to have four fully equipped and operational ambulances with two being housed in Indianola, one in Ruleville and one non-staffed but ready for immediate dispatch.
Also in regular session on Monday, the Sunflower County Board of Supervisors approved a request from Circuit Clerk Carolyn Hamilton to dispense with the November 7 county elections because only one person qualified in each category.
In correlation with that, Terosa Bradley was appointed to fill the unexpired District 1 Election Commissioner term and Sunflower County Consolidated School District Board Members Edward Thomas and Emma Golden were deemed elected because they were unopposed. Hamilton told the board those positions were the only ones up for election.
