Dec. 19--"They're always scrubbing it down and cleaning it," Fire Chief John Selberg said of one of the trucks. "After calls, they come back, they're even cleaning under doors."
Maybe that's because these vehicles are the first to have permanent "Germantown" lettering on the sides of the trucks.
The ambulances, the department's first fleet, went into service the first week in December.
"Within placing them all in service, every one of them had made a call in two hours," Selberg said.
The department last year received 2,150 medical calls, which Selberg said, on an average year, account for about 68 percent of the total number of emergency calls.
The city took over ambulance services in Germantown last July, using rental ambulances until their shiny new red trucks arrived just after Thanksgiving.
Selberg said the transition from using a contracted service to responding in their own ambulances has gone smoothly.
Previously, the fire department was part of Shelby County's contract and would dispatch to medical calls in a fire truck, take care of the patient at the scene and then wait for the ambulance service to arrive to take the patient to the hospital.
"The guys didn't feel good," Selberg said. "They wanted to have that ability to maintain that patient relationship, make sure that the patient was taken care of."
There were times when the waits were detrimental to the patients' health, the chief said, although per the contract, 90 percent of the calls had to be responded to in nine minutes.
The department's fire truck response times are five minutes, and with the new ambulances, they have shaved that down to four minutes, on average.
Selberg said his firefighters already had the training to be EMTs or paramedics, so the only training needed was on driving the ambulance and loading and unloading patients.
Cost was a concern upfront, Selberg said, as the city previously paid about $475,000 per year for contracted ambulance services, and the budget is now at $1.4 million, plus the $527,660 that came out of the department's capital improvement fund to buy the trucks.
Revenue from insurance companies is expected to make up the difference, Selberg said, and half the money for this year has already been recouped since July 1.
"The revenue is pretty close to the projections we were looking at," he said.
The cost for residents is also lower, although most of those costs are covered by insurance. A basic transport costs $650 through Germantown, as opposed to the county's contracted rate of $908, which doesn't include simple treatments like administering oxygen.
Two of the ambulances are at Station 3 on Farmington Boulevard, and two are at Station 4 on Forest Hill Irene Road. One ambulance at each of the two stations is staffed at all times, with other department members able to run the reserve ambulance as needed.
The new trucks, which are the 2014 Ford F-350 Chassis model, have a lifespan of five to seven years, which Selberg said he hopes to extend by rotating which ones are used on a daily basis. They are equipped with wi-fi and a mobile data terminal in the front seat, much like in a police vehicle.
Selberg said call loads are increasing in Germantown every year, with an aging population and a growing medical community in the area.
"We've been slammed since we took over the ambulance service," he said.
Copyright 2013 - The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.
