Hospital owned ambulances---why discontinued years back???

[Dr. Zuki 1]

Many area private hospitals (including all in Yonkers except Cross County Hospital) had their own ambulances used for emergencies up until maybe the early to mid-1970's. Does anybody know why this service was discontinued ? I am not sure also if the local police department's utilized them for all emergency calls.

Happy New Year

Dr. Zuki

Yonkers

[Guest ksneubec]

I can only assume it had something to do with costs, which still

haunt agencies today. There is little money to be found in emergency-based ambulance runs. Most of the profit comes from transports. Not all hospital-based ambulances are gone-sort of. Westchester EMS is part of the Stelaris network, which is a network composed of Northern Westchester Hospital, Lawrence Hospital, White Plains Hospital and Phelps. Also, Weschester Medical Center runs Stat Flight, which has 2 ground ambulances for high risk transports.

Karl Neubecker, PA-C, FFI/EMTB

[WAS967 97]

Hi Karl,

Good to see you on the board. Just a point of clarificaion for all that are interested: STAT-Flight is no longer really run by the med center. Due to the ongoing cost issues of running the valhalla hospital, the operation was outsourced to the company that provided the helicopters and pilots, a company called Air Methods. (which bought Rocky Mountain Helicopters a year or so ago). Basically the operation is run similar to Albany Medical Center's program, all profits go back to the program instead of the hospital. I'm not sure how the staffing is, wether the nurses and medics are also employees of air methods, or of the hospital (I should ask them one day). Wierdest thing is: Dispatch for the helicopters is based in the midwest now, I think Kentucky? All the dispatchers at WestCom lost thier jobs basically,.

-Chris