Vulcan County and local communities are getting together to explore the idea of setting up their own ambulance service.

Reeve Jason Schneider says many times their ambulance is sent elsewhere leaving them without the kind of service they used to have.

"Currently the ambulance service that we are receiving is substandard, we are going extended periods of time with no coverage and we've just come to the point there it's unacceptable and we're going to try to see if we can find something that's going to serve our residents more, we've kind of reached our wits end," he says.

Schneider says there are a couple big advantages to having their own system.

"I think the biggest advantage we can keep an ambulance in our area. Currently the flex system moves ambulances all over the place and it moves them into the bigger centres and ends up they're all out of position when an emergency does happen, especially in a rural area and there's no ambulance to respond we can go close to an hour before we have an ambulance return to the county. Having a local service we would have more say in where ambulances are and prevent them from just getting sucked into the major urban centres."

Schneider says since the dispatch centre was moved, finding rural addresses has become a real struggle.

He says it's been a struggle on almost a daily basis finding a rural address.

A committee co-chaired by Highwood MLA R.J. Sigurdson submitted its recommendations to the minister of health September 16th.

But Schneider says they're moving ahead anyway.

"We're waiting to see this report and read this report but I think at this point we've gone years without a proper ambulance service and at this point we need to go back to a local service like we previously had that was able to service our residents needs."

He says right now the communities are looking at the potential costs associated with setting up their own service.