ROSEBUD — Faced with increasing costs for prescription medicines, the Gasconade County E-911 Board of Directors might be forced to have employees shoulder some of the expense of health insurance.

That was the concern voiced Monday morning by Gasconade County Communications Executive Director Lisa Thacker during the board’s monthly session. She suggested having a discussion in October or November with Directors John Adams and Clyde Zelch, the members of the Insurance Committee, aimed at deciding if agency employees should take on part of the expense of healthcare insurance. Thacker said the agency-provided healthcare coverage is taking big hits because of rising pharmaceutical costs.

She noted that she met recently with agency personnel to discuss possible ways to keep down health insurance costs. To illustrate the big cost of medicines, she pointed to one employee’s prescription medication that carries a price tag of $18,000 a month.

Adams, the 911 board treasurer, expressed disappointment that the agency might have to require the employees to pick up some of the cost of health insurance.

“So, we gave them a raise last month and take it back this month,” he said. “That’s crap.”

“It’s not the doctors visits,” Thacker said, “it’s the pharmaceuticals.”

Adams was referring to a pay raise granted at the board’s last session in an effort to bring local dispatchers’ pay closer to that of their counterparts in adjacent counties — a move aimed at attracting and retaining dispatchers. Shifting part of the cost of health insurance to the employees wouldn’t take place until the next year’s operating budget takes effect.

In other matters, Thacker explained how the agency’s dispatchers are adapting to the new Computer Assisted Dispatching (CAD) system in place. She described the new system as “really one of the most complex systems a dispatcher would have to relearn.”

She praised the local dispatch staff for mastering the new system.

“I am just extremely proud of our group,” Thacker said, adding that the company that supplied the new system stayed on site to help the dispatchers learn its intricacies. “I can’t say enough about this company,” the executive director told the board.

Also, the new CAD system is bolstered by Rapid SOS — a feature that provides video from I-phones used to make a 911 call. The feature keeps the main subject of the video blurred until the caller presses a button that removes the blur, giving a clear view of the scene to the dispatcher who took the call.

The video stays in the agency’s system for 90 days. Currently, recordings of 911 calls are kept for one year. Board members said a new policy will be needed regarding the retention of Rapid SOS videos.

On another front, the board agreed with Thacker that more information is needed before agreeing to transfer 911 callers expressing suicidal thoughts to 988, an organization that Thacker said is aimed at helping people with suicidal thoughts to stay out of hospitals and jails. She said she met Friday with 988 representatives, who were urging the dispatch agency to refer those callers to 988, which is based in Rolla.

“There are a lot of questions we have about it,” Thacker said, who described 988 as “a resource we can use; it’s a question of how do we use it?”

Director Mike Mueller, the chief of the Hermann Area Ambulance District, questioned whether County Communications’ transfer of one of the callers to 988 would raise a liability issue for County Communications. He was skeptical of transferring any of the calls.

“Too many unanswered questions on that,” he said.