Huron County EMS has Entered into Another Cross-Border Billing Agreement with Bruce County

by Bob Montgomery

Huron County's Chief of Emergency Services told County Council at their last meeting that another Cross-Border Ambulance Billing Agreement has been signed with Bruce County.

Jeff Horseman says the agreement has now been approved by Bruce County and Huron County. This agreement is the renewal of a previous agreement that had expired, with the same terms as before. It has been renewed for an additional five years. Horseman says the first agreement was signed in 2011 and that was for ten years. He says under the agreement they do a cost analysis and their cost per call to determine who owes what and then exchange any money that they need to between the two counties to make up the difference.

“Provincial legislation requires ambulance service operators, or upper tier municipalities that operate ambulance services, to provide seamless service between their neighbours, so it's always the closest ambulance to a call that responds to any emergency call that occurs, regardless of who's area the call is coming from or where the person lives. Whichever crew is closest is the crew that gets sent.” Horseman adds, in a situation like the one between Huron and Bruce, Huron County has a couple of stations that are very close to their northern border with Bruce County, so they are often in the south area of Bruce County and are the first available unit to get there and that's where the cross-border agreement comes into play.

Horseman says they had a similar agreement with Perth County at one time, but he says there's a lot of administrative work that is required in that type of agreement and the difference in the number of calls between Huron and Perth wasn't enough to justify that administrative work in billing each other so that agreement was terminated.