Carroll County Ambulance Services Director, Darrell Baker, sought the advice of the board of supervisors on a maintenance contract for life-saving equipment at Monday morning’s meeting. He says they have various heart monitors from manufacturer, Physio-Control and the three-year warranty has just expired on five of those. Another LUCAS CPR device he thought had a year warranty on it, only has 90 days. He contacted Physio-Control about maintenance.
Baker says that he questioned some of the proposed coverage.
Basically, according to Baker, all they get is a discount on parts and batteries, that they can generally get cheaper through other suppliers. In addition, if one breaks, he can have another in hand from elsewhere in the county very quickly. Baker says he is comfortable with splitting some of the risk. The bigger machine, the LUCAS automatic CPR machine is what he calls their “bread and butter” piece of equipment—needed on a very routine basis. Carroll and all satellite offices, with the exception of Templeton, each have their own. The cost of each unit can be over $26,000 and the batteries are $730 apiece, with two in each and a recommendation to replace every three years. Baker says he believes that the LUCAS maintenance coverage is most important, and they would receive a discount because it is a newer machine. However, he would probably look at self-insuring for the other, less costly machines.
The trap, Baker says, is the company provides the equipment through a grant, but they do not tell you up front what the cost of the maintenance contract is going to be. He says the company may come back and renegotiate the price if they pass on it this time around. Neil Bock says he is not big on this kind of insurance and Gene Meiners says he is comfortable with the fact that there is back up available and that they should forego the contract right now.
