LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – The director of Seminole EMS testified before the Texas House Committee on Public Health this week.
Last year, the Texas Comptroller’s Office approved $25 million for 58 rural counties under House Bill 3000, which established the Rural Ambulance Service Grant Program.
As of June 1st, $23 million has been allocated to 53 eligible counties, including the South Plains, according to the comptroller’s office.
During the hearing, Carly French suggested that lawmakers focus more on the organization; she encouraged them to keep their focus on the community it serves.
“The county that I serve, Gaines County, is 15 hundred square miles,” French said. “Seminole EMS covers 11 hundred square miles, and a service northeast of me covers the remaining four. Because of the rule in the grant application, my judge was tasked with choosing one of us to receive these funds.”
French emphasized to the committee that there are several established providers, with stations and fleets, across multiple counties in their region. However, because one county received this grant, the others don’t get the same benefits. That’s because, under grant rules, that ambulance does not belong to the provider but to the county for the next decade.
French explains that a lot of the time, purchases like this require a lien time of years rather than months.
“I think it’s important to realize that when an EMS service signs for an ambulance, we do not make payment upfront,” French says. “Okay, we are signing an agreement; we’re locking in that price in order to know that we have it coming.”
She told lawmakers that Gaines County is still waiting on two ambulances that she signed for in 2023.
“But because I signed a piece of paper back in 2023,” French said, “that ambulance is now ineligible to be paid for with this grant funding.”
Russell Gallahan, manager for the Texas Comptroller, argues that’s not what the program is for.
“The difficulty you have there,” Gallahan says, “is that this is an incentive to have more ambulances, and incentivizing paying for ambulances that were previously purchased would seem to be maybe in conflict with what the intent is to have more ambulances, not fund current ambulances that were on order.”
French emphasized to lawmakers that not everyone needs a new ambulance, and stressed it would be better to let the county decide how that money is used.
“Some of us have cardiac monitors that are no longer serviceable, and those are $50k a piece,” French said. “I mean, your stretchers, your auto lights- these are big-ticket items that you know sometimes you get a new ambulance, but you don’t have the updated equipment to take care of our patients. Everybody’s different, nobody’s the same, but I think if the commissioner’s court had the flexibility and they were tasked with the responsibility of getting it out to their services, we could do better for our patients.“
Gallahan explains that once the grant money is issued, there will be a deadline to submit compliance reports to prove the purchase has been made.
Watch the hearing here.
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