At its most recent meeting, the Cleveland County Quorum Court authorized County Judge Jimmy Dale Adair to negotiate a new contract with EASI (Emergency Ambulance Service Inc.) to provide ambulance service to the county.
According to the Cleveland County Herald, the county collects a 0.25 percent sales tax to support a local ambulance service and EASI has an ambulance at Rison for that purpose.
The newspaper reported that the contract with EASI is on a sliding scale, determined by the number of “paid” calls per month. Those are calls that would be paid by an insurer or other source. The more paid calls per month, the lower the fee would be.
If the service receives 62 paid calls in a month, there would be no fee paid to the ambulance service for that month.
Adair said he has been contacted by the ambulance service about a new contract and they reported that there will be an increase next year after forgoing an increase over the past several years.
