This time last year Buddy Fry was starting not only a new job, but a new “business” for the county.

That’s when the Lawrence County Emergency Medical Service was launched. Looking at the first year of the EMS, Fry, director of the system, likes what he has seen so far.

“It is highly successful,” he said. “Better than expected, less problems than anticipated. As far as billing and accounting for runs, far superior.”

The county was forced to start its own EMS after the three-decades-long Southeast Ohio Emergency Medical Service was disbanded.

Originally SEOEMS served Athens, Lawrence and Jackson counties, but went out of business when Athens and Jackson’s county commissioners voted to pull out of the service.

That meant Lawrence County had to come up with its own service fast. On Jan. 1, LCEMS took off with $600,000 in start-up capital when St. Mary’s Medical Center bought short-term revenue anticipation notes issued by the county and $300,000 the commissioners put it into its budget.

The EMS plan had budgeted year-end revenue from the service at $1.75 million from patient billing.

“Six weeks prior to this week, we reached that $1.75 million,” Fry said. “And last week we reached $2 million.”

Much of that financial success comes because of a specific patient-billing tracking system the county service installed.

“One of the concerns the commissioners had with SEOEMS was they got complaints from patients who would say they would call for an ambulance on July 1 and it might be Sept. 30 and they still hadn’t got a bill for the call,” Fry said. “(The commissioners) don’t know how many runs were lost.”

Now the county EMS has personnel who tracks each run.

“If dispatch has sent us out 29 times the day before and (the employee) looks and sees there are 28 reports, she finds out where the 29th one went to,” Fry said. “None of them fall through the cracks.”

When the EMS started in January, it averaged 27 runs per day. Right now the service averages 30 a day. The highest runs per day came in at 54 with the lowest days at under 20.

However, even with that refined tracking system, the EMS would have to bring in $3.5 million to be self-sufficient.

“It would be nice to be that way, but it is not realistic,” Fry said. “In EMS you can’t play who your customers are. You can’t deny anyone. That is the one thing that makes EMS a different animal from a private ambulance who takes non-emergency (patients). They have the ability to prequalify their clientele.

“We end up with a lot of patients who never pay their bills. … You can get the information and collect what you can collect. But you can’t be 100 percent efficient. You will never collect as much as it costs to provide the service. That is why there is the tax support to make up that difference.”

One-half of the 1 and one-half percent sales tax funds the EMS, the 911 dispatching and the Emergency Management Agency.

Right now the EMS has 65 full and part-time employees, up about 12 from when it started in Jan. 1. Only two employees who had been with SEOEMS did not apply for jobs with the new service; of those all but five were hired by the county EMS.

“The employees have remained loyal to the county,” Fry said. “They want to work in Lawrence County. That is where they worked before and that is where they want to stay.”