The Lawrence County Commissioners want a bill from an outside consulting firm involved in setting up the county Emergency Medical Service cut in half because it didn’t do all that the commission had wanted the agency to do.

Recently the county received an invoice from MedCare out of Columbus for $5,000 for credentialing services that the commissioners had sought for the newly formed EMS. Those credentials were the National Provider Identifier number, pharmacy licenses, Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment certificate and Medicare provider certification. All of those were required for the EMS either to begin operation or to bill patients’ insurance companies after it was up and running.

The EMS had to start operation on Jan. 1, because the tri-county EMS that had provided service for almost 40 years went out of existence at the end of 2010.

“We asked for help from MedCare. We only had so much time (to get those licenses and certifications),” Les Boggs, commission president, said at its regular Thursday meeting.

However, in early January, the county officials began to worry that work on submitting the application for the Medicare billing number was not being done as quickly as they had wanted.

“We feared it might not be ready to submit to Medicare before the 30-day deadline passed,” according to a letter the commission sent to MedCare Thursday.

On Feb. 1, MedCare sent to the county’s EMS director the Medicare application for his signature.

“Prior to that, around the mid to latter part of January, our contracted billing company, Medical Claims Assistance, had become concerned that we were not going to be certified by Medicare within the 30-day time frame in order for them to bill for runs beginning Jan. 1,” the letter states. “MCA offered to complete our application to Medicare and deliver it to the office in Columbus. We asked them to do this since they stated they could do this within a few days.”

On Feb. 17 the county’s EMS got its Medicare provider number because of the efforts of MCA.

The county also had to resubmit a request to receive authorization for all of the drugs needed for the emergency service.

“It was necessary for the county to apply for an addendum to the (pharmacy) licenses because eight protocol drugs were not included on the initial list of drugs,” the letter states.

Thus, the commission contends that MedCare did not provide all five of the items the county EMS had sought. Since there was no contract or written agreement for these services, the county has asked that MedCare resubmit a bill for only $2,500.

After the commission meeting Boggs said he did not anticipate any problem with MedCare.

“I think they are reasonable people,” he said.

Commissioners also approved accepting grants from the Southern Ohio Agriculture and Community Development Foundation totaling $25,000.

Commissioners Boggs and Bill Pratt approved dividing the money between the county Soil and Water Conservation District, which will receive $22,500, and the county extension office that will receive $2,500. Commissioner Paul Herrell was absent from the meeting due to illness.

In other business the commissioners:

• Approved the request for use of the Lawrence County Airpark for soccer practice by the county’s youth league;

• Proclaimed May 25 as Wally Haugen Day, honoring the retirement of the employee with the county engineer’s office;

• Signed an agreement with Marathon Petroleum for asphalt emulsions for the county engineer’s office;

• Approved the weekly dog warden’s report where 36 dogs were destroyed, five were sold and four were redeemed with 81 dogs in custody.