The county’s EMS may be relatively new, but already it is teaming up with other emergency medical services to prove there is power in numbers when it comes to getting its voice heard at the Statehouse.

Last week local EMS director Buddy Fry joined officials from the EMS organizations at 27 other Ohio counties for the organizational meeting of the newly formed Ohio Association of Cooperative EMS.

“We want to be an association so we can speak as one voice to the legislature,” Fry said. “They would rather hear from one organization than 28 separate counties.”

Although the state has 84 counties, in larger metropolitan areas cities and larger townships will have their own emergency medical services instead of a countywide service. However, the new organization is open exclusively to county EMS.

The 28 EMS units met in Delaware County for an informational meeting.

“We talked about how we operate and had an open discussion session,” Fry said.

Among the southern counties participating are Gallia, Vinton, Jackson, Athens and Hocking. The Lawrence County EMS has one of the larger units with an annual run volume of 10,500. That is a higher than average volume than the rest of the counties where the median volume run is 3,800.

“If this goes right, it should be valuable for all the counties involved,” Fry said.