The City of Belpre EMS will do a trial run helping local hospital with transport

BELPRE, Ohio (WTAP) - The City of Belpre EMS’s board has agreed to a trial run of helping Memorial Health System with transport. This was announced at a special committee meeting of the whole.

According to officials, this will specifically be for transporting people from the Belpre emergency room to the Marietta main campus if they need more tests.

The City of Belpre EMS would help between 9pm and 7am, according to Belpre Law Director Tom Webster. He said the EMS call volume during those times tends to be low.

“The EMS group has run the statistics on what kind of runs they’ve been making and what time of day. They’ve been averaging one call between nine o’clock and seven the next morning,” he said.

Webster emphasized that this is a trial run.

“It’s really experimental at this point to see if there is a problem with being able to provide timely, quick services to Belpre residents. The board committed that, if there were problems with that system, that they would go back to the old system and they would not do any additional transportation,” he said.

EMS Board Member Mario Coon told WTAP that he sees this as adding to services in Belpre since most people in the Belpre emergency room are from Belpre.

EMS Administrator Ryan Varian told WTAP that this trial run will not be put in place immediately. There are things that need to be worked out first.

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