OBSERVER File Photo The Warren City Council has approved providing day-time covers to five municipalities in southeastern Warren County.

There’s no silver bullet to solve emergency medical services challenges in Warren County. But an agreement is in the works that would see the City of Warren provide day-time coverage for five municipalities in southeastern Warren County.

Clarendon Borough as well as Mead, Pleasant, Cherry Grove and Sheffield townships banded together earlier this year to form a multi-municipal EMS commission.

Warren City Council approved a resolution Monday to authorize the city to enter into an agreement with that group.

Fire Chief Dave Krogler told the Times Observer that the agreement would see the city provide ambulance service for those municipalities from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The challenge to agreements such as these for the last couple years has been the dollars and cents. The reimbursement from insurance or Medicare/Medicaid hasn’t covered, the city claims, their costs for responding outside the city limits.

The agreement before council Monday would leave those funding streams in place but require the municipality — which is the entity legally required to provide EMS services in its boundaries — to pay additionally for the response.

The rate in the agreement would see the municipality where a call originates pay the city $300 for a response or $150 for a dispatch where they were told to turn around enroute.

According to Krogler, the requests for proposals projected 380 to 410 calls.

That would bring the financial total of the agreement — based on the lower call projection — to between $57,000 and $115,000 depending on the call type.

“Congratulations to all those that worked on this agreement,” Councilman Maurice Cashman said.

He asked about responses into the municipalities not covered by this agreement.

“Currently there is no fee on the fee resolution for a response to a municipality,” Krogler said. “We have fees for ambulance responses that we bill the patient for the service but not the municipality for the response to the call.”

“First off, there’s a lot of great work that has gone into this,” Mayor Dave Wortman said. “I think it’s a huge first step to sorting out and coming to a great step in trying to solve the EMS problem broadly across the county.”

The agreement, city officials said, still needs to be approved by each of the member municipalities.

The city is open to other municipalities signing on to the agreement but City Manager Nancy Freenock said that the city has to reserve the right to say so if it is taking on too much.

“(Our) first responsibilities are to taxpayers and residents of the city,” she said.

Councilman John Wortman called this agreement the “strongest” one “that has come before council in my tenure.”

Krogler told council that the plan can be facilitated with current staffing levels.

He stressed that the revenue this generates helps clever the cost of “stand-by readiness.”

The city operates two ambulances. Should one ambulance leave the city, the other will stay in the city limits, Mayor Wortman explained. Should a second response outside the city be needed he said that two EMTs would respond QRS, or without an ambulance in order to provide immediate care until an ambulance is free.

“We heard that as one of the biggest concerns at the council level,” he said. “That was frankly one of the larger pieces of what was discussed.”

Council passed the agreement unanimously.