Private, Fire Based Ambulance

[Shepard]

Has anyone thought of or worked on a private, fire based ambulance?
Scenario: EMT X works at Private ALS Ambulance Company, but also is a volunteer with BLS Fire Dept. Medic Y is in the same boat.
ALS Private decides that they will put an ambulance at BLS Fire that says Fire on the side, is at Fire's station and is staffed by EMT X and Medic Y, who are both trained as FF, but also as the ambulance crew.
Basically, Private ALS pays for the crew and supplies, and gets to bill for the transports, and Fire BLS gets an ALS rig and two more people to help with fire suppression. X and Y would be on a private suppression ambulance.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Improvements?

 

[rmabrey]

If im reading this correctly, why would a private service pay a crew to do fire stuff? The point of a private service is to make money. If the crew is playing fireman they arent making money.

 

[Handsome Robb]

So basically your saying have a private ambulance based in a VFD station that is painted like the VFD trucks and the EMS crew helps the VFD with fire suppression?

Never heard of it but I'm sure privates have used VFD stations for a post before...I doubt they'd want them in a unit that isn't flying their colors though. That's a huge part of privates' advertising.

 

[shfd739]

So basically your saying have a private ambulance based in a VFD station that is painted like the VFD trucks and the EMS crew helps the VFD with fire suppression?

Never heard of it but I'm sure privates have used VFD stations for a post before...I doubt they'd want them in a unit that isn't flying their colors though. That's a huge part of privates' advertising.

I know of alot of privates that post at VFDs. No way in hell will the medics be allowed to play suppression though. Maybe help make hose connections or help on scene but putting on bunker gear is a no no.

 

[Shepard]

I'm in agreement with you all. Someone proposed this to me and I figured I'd put it out to the masses. Just to clarify, the fire dept. is a combo paid/vol, with a pretty good chunk of funding. I guess private would provide a bus, equipment and most importantly medical direction. But they would bill for transports and receive the income off that. And then I suppose fire would put in some cash to sweeten the pot for the private. The problem I run into is that, at least at my company, there's no way in hell, even if X and Y are crosstrained, that they'd be allowed to play firefighter on Private's payroll. Interesting...

 

[rmabrey]

The Volly's in this area wanted to do something similiar to get around a county contract.

In their case they wanted to buy the ambulance, put both our logo's on it, and staff it with one of our crews. We could bill for it, but not use it outside of that response area.

It didn't go far.

 

[Jim37F]

The Volly's in this area wanted to do something similiar to get around a county contract.

In their case they wanted to buy the ambulance, put both our logo's on it, and staff it with one of our crews. We could bill for it, but not use it outside of that response area.

It didn't go far.

Really? That sounds like a decent solution to me, why didn't it work?

 

[rmabrey]

Really? That sounds like a decent solution to me, why didn't it work?

Cause county runs (those 3 VFD are In county) might total 5 a day on average in a system that does 100 plus runs a day.

If an ambulance is sitting, its not making money.

 

[Tigger]

I worked for a private ambulance company that had a contract with a smallish protection district. We had an ambulance in two of their stations, and the ambulance had their logo and ours on it, and was painted red. Our uniform shirts had patches for both agencies and we only took calls within the fire district. Several of our EMTs and medics were also volunteer firefighters for the department. At no time were they ever allowed to place bunker gear on the ambulance or otherwise function as a firefighter while on the clock for the ambulance company. I was told this mostly has to do with insurance, which is sensible. On the flip side if they were volunteering for fire and we needed extra hands in back they were still permitted to drive the ambulance, something that the other firefighters could not do.

 

[truetiger]

Two words, workers comp.....