SPRINGFIELD (JUNE 9) -- With little fanfare, and no name change, the Colorado-based company that provides ambulance service to Northampton was acquired earlier this year in a deal worth $1.2 billion.
Though the name on its fleet didn't change, the work done by American Medical Response Inc. is swiftly evolving -- even in Northampton.
Emergency
medical dispatchers with American Medical Response handle calls at the
company's Cottage Street office in Springfield. The Springfield office's
communications center will soon be handling all 911 ambulance calls from
Northampton. (Carol Lollis photo)
In a matter of days, the company will switch the processing of Northampton ambulance calls to its new communications center in Springfield, where it is already orchestrating emergency responses to much of Hampden County. Officials insist callers will notice no difference in service.
The same number of vehicles called for under the company's contract with Northampton and with The Cooley Dickinson Hospital will remain at the ready at its 82 Conz St. quarters -- or stationed around the city.
"The only difference will be that the phone is answered in a different place," said Leonard H. Guercia Jr., the company's director of operations for western Massachusetts.
But other differences lie ahead. This is a time of rapid change in the health-care industry, and the ambulance business, it appears, is no exception.
American Medical Response says it is continuing to transform itself from a medical transportation company into a health-care company that provides transportation.
Its employees are not just ambulance operators, Guercia insists, but a form of "front-line medical care."
Emergency medical dispatch
A main element of that will be the growing importance of what's called emergency medical dispatch -- a practice popularized in television dramas like "Rescue 911," but only now becoming widely available.
The service is credited with saving lives, including some in Northampton. It places company employees at a key place in crisis -- on the phone with people at the scenes of trauma. In that way, they are positioned both to help save lives and fulfill a market need.
The work of the emergency medical dispatcher is distinct from that of roving paramedics and emergency medical technicians. The dispatchers work in climate-controlled rooms at consoles loaded with computers and telecommunications equipment. They are linked to their consumers by telephone.
One day last week at AMR's Springfield communications center, two calls came at the same time. In one, a mother was coached through what she should do with her young son, who appeared to have a penny lodged in his throat. Another caller had come upon a family member who was unresponsive.
The boy swallowed the penny. An ambulance rolled on the other case, as the dispatcher gave critical advice.
"I was skeptical, but it works," said Deborah (Howard) Clapp, AMR's operations manager in Northampton, where emergency medical dispatch work began last year. "We've had some really significant saves."
Clapp, who has been involved with ambulance service in Northampton for many years, will leave AMR later this month, having declined a company offer to take a job with lessened responsibilities. A new manager from Berkshire County will take over her post.
Deborah (Howard) Clapp, the Northampton-based operations
manager for American Medical Response, will lose her job in a consolidation
brought about by the national merger. She will leave June 15, but continue
to act for a time as a consultant. (Carol Lollis photo)
She said she believes AMR's plan to consolidate dispatching work in Springfield will cause no disruption in Hampshire County.
How the company is handling it offers a case study in how sensitive a business practice can be, in a health-care field so linked with public safety.
For the first three months, three dispatchers who have worked in AMR's Conz Street site in Northampton will be based in Springfield. A dispatching supervisor familiar with Northampton will be on the console, dedicated to taking calls relayed from the Northampton Police Department. That department is the first one now to receive 911 calls. All emergency medical calls in Northampton are shifted to AMR.
"They'll fit into this new system really well," Clapp said of the current Northampton AMR workers. "They're good common sense people. We expect the little human blips, the misunderstandings."
Keeping track
Northampton Police Chief Russell Sienkiewicz said he will be keeping track of the dispatching shift, to be sure there are no problems. He said he has "a fair amount of confidence" that it will be trouble-free.
"The only thing that I'll have to monitor -- and I will -- is the response time, and the mixups. ... In this day and age, the necessity for them to be in the community is pretty minimal."
Once in Springfield, the dispatchers will join a crew that works in a room remotely resembling the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
Its fire protection system can sense when to use dry material, to prevent damage to the computers. Dispatchers work in a semi-circle under special low light that is calculated to give them the best views of their screens -- which flash current emergency calls in many colors. The floor is insulated to keep acoustics just right for listening with headsets.
At a separate set of stations, in a horseshoe-shaped desk nearby, "call takers" receive incoming calls, and hand them off to dispatchers, depending on their nature.
From this room, in a building in the city's Indian Orchard section a few miles east of downtown, the company controls 23 ambulances across Hampden County, eight of them in Holyoke.
Under AMR's contract with Springfield, it must be able to put an ambulance on a scene in 10 minutes or less, for 95 percent of its calls. In Northampton, the contract demands a response time of eight minutes.
Calls answered here come from Springfield, East Longmeadow, Holyoke, Westfield and West Springfield. The company also provides backup service to a network of smaller towns.
Guercia, AMR's director for the region, said the size of the fleet gives it flexibility to direct crews anywhere -- in case of mass trauma. He says the company has plenty of experience fielding a heavy volume of calls in one dispatching center.
Karen Maher, a dispatcher with American Medical Response
Inc. in Springfield, talks a caller through a crisis. The company's dispatching
Springfield center is poised to take over responsibility for Northampton
ambulance calls. (Carol Lollis photo)
In New Haven, for instance, a high-tech AMR dispatching center with 40 employees orchestrates ambulance runs in that city and in Waterbury, Bridgeport, Milford and many smaller communities in between. It directs the work of 90 ambulances and 200 smaller "chair cars."
With the addition of Northampton calls, the monthly volume in Springfield is expected to rise from 900 to 1,100, Guercia said.
"This golden age of computers has streamlined the dispatching process ... and made it an art form," he said. "The care that's done in the first several minutes can be life-saving. We can talk a parent through the Heimlich maneuver, for instance, and save a life."
Receiving a subsidy
The company is still receiving a subsidy shared evenly by Northampton taxpayers and The Cooley Dickinson Hospital. This year, the company was paid $100,000, down from the $110,000 it or its predecessor, Northampton Ambulance, has been getting since 1989.
That aid is scheduled to be cut to $50,000 for the year starting in July and end altogether in 1998.
The contract runs through the year 2002. It calls for the company to provide two 24-hour paramedic units and one "basic level" ambulance that runs 10 hours a day, seven days a week.