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May 15, 2008 11:02 pm US/Central
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Ambulances Trying To Save Gas While Saving Lives
(WCCO)
Faced with record gas prices, families can drive less and slow down. But what if your job was speeding around town and saving lives?
Right now Minnesotans paying $3.68 a gallon to gas up their cars, but it costs hospitals nearly 70 cents more for every gallon of diesel they pump into their ambulances.
They're now hoping to save money without putting the brakes on safety, and it starts with drivers, like paramedic Eric Leiendecker, who's responded to plenty of emergencies.
"Everybody has bad days. And that's when we end up getting called," he said.
He hopes the company he works for, HealthEast, does not face its own emergency.
Filling up his ambulance just a quarter of a tank on Thursday cost just more than $78.
In fact, every time the price of gas goes up by just 10 cents and stays there, it costs HealthEast an extra $12,000 every year to fill up its fleet.
So now, faced with soaring fuel costs, HealthEast has asked Leiendecker and its other drivers to start doing things differently, and it's found a partner in its plea.
"We recognized that we have a common problem," said Brian LaCroix, Vice President for Medical Transportation at Allina Medical Transportation.
HealthEast works with Allina, its competitor, on solutions, knowing the two companies combined will spend $1.5 million on fuel alone this year.
"We don't want to get into a situation where we have to limit service. We can't do that, we don't intend to do that, but we don't even want to get close to that," said LaCroix.
Both companies use special GPS units in their ambulances to track where they are. Dispatchers now send the closest one to an emergency.
HealthEast has special black boxes in its vehicles to slow down drivers when they're not responding to an emergency. Drivers also use them to find the quickest route to an emergency.
Both companies are not allowing drivers to idle their ambulances.
"If we don't do something now, the fuel expenditures will eat into other areas of our operations. So maybe we can't train as much as we normally do, or we can't turn over new equipment as often as we'd like to," said Kevin Raun, HealthEast Ambulance Manager.
That's why everyone is conserving now to protect the future.
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