Every year, there are about 240 million 911 calls made throughout the country. During at least some of these calls, people will request for ambulances to be sent out to the scene of an accident.
More often than not, the ambulances that show up at the scene of an accident are not from hospitals. Instead, they usually come from a private ambulance business that operates them.
If you own an ambulance service, you’ll want your ambulances to be called out to as many of these scenes as possible. It’ll allow your private ambulance facility to stay in business for many years.
You can attract a lot of attention to your ambulance service business by providing people with the resources that they need. Here are seven essentials that you’ll need to have to run a successful ambulance business.
1. Ambulances
This should almost go without saying. But it’ll obviously be very difficult for you to run an ambulance service without ambulances!
From the very beginning, you’ll need to invest in ambulances that you can send out when someone calls on your ambulance service for help. You’ll need for these ambulances to be well-maintained so that they’re always ready to go at the drop of a hat.
You should also get yourself into the habit of upgrading your ambulances every so often. It’ll be a big investment on your part, but you can’t afford to fall behind in terms of the ambulances that you can offer.
With almost 30,000 other ambulance services scattered throughout the U.S., there will always be options if your company doesn’t have the best ambulances around.
2. Garages
When your ambulances aren’t out responding to medical emergencies, you’ll want to keep them tucked away so that they’re safe and sound. You can do this by renting or buying garages that you can run your ambulance service out of over time.
These garages will guarantee that your ambulances don’t start to fall apart on you ahead of schedule. They’ll also provide your employees with a place to work on your ambulances and to ensure that they’re always stocked up with everything they’ll need.
3. Emergency Medical Technicians
There is certainly no shortage of emergency medical technicians working in the U.S. at the moment. There are well over 260,000 of them.
You’ll need to have at least a few EMTs putting in work for your company. You should try to hire only the best of the best so that your ambulance service earns a reputation for providing some of the best emergency medical care around.
See to it that all of your EMTs are properly trained to do their jobs. Provide them with extra training over the years, too, so that they’re always prepared to respond to almost any situation.
4. Stretchers
The EMTs who work for your ambulance service will provide some people with medical care right on the scene of accidents. But they’ll also sometimes be asked to transport people to hospitals and other medical facilities.
To do this, EMTs will need to be able to pick people up and drop them off at these facilities. It’ll require them to have stretchers handy in your ambulances.
You should have high-quality stretchers in the back of all your ambulance service vehicles. You should also upgrade these stretchers every now and then since they’ll be some of the most important tools that your EMTs use.
5. Medical Equipment
In order to do their jobs, the EMTs who are employed by your ambulance service will need to have easy access to medical equipment. Some of the medical equipment that they’ll need will include things like:
- Stethoscopes
- Thermometers
- Sphygmomanometers
If you’re sending EMTs out on calls without these types of medical equipment, you’ll be asking for trouble. You should outfit all your ambulances with this equipment and test the equipment early and often to ensure that it works the way it’s supposed to.
6. Medical Supplies
In addition to having a whole host of medical equipment in your ambulances, you’ll also need to provide your EMTs with medical supplies. These are the supplies that they’ll use to provide patients with medical care, either on the scene of an accident or on the way to a hospital.
Here are several of the medical supplies that your EMTs will need:
- Waterproof adhesive bandages
- Trauma dressings
- Aluminum splints
- Cervical collars
- Umbilical clamps
- Alcohol pads
- Burn gel
Your company’s EMTs might be put into situations where they’ll literally have to save people’s lives. You don’t want them to be scrambling around looking for the right supplies when they’re put into this position.
7. Billing Tools
At the end of the day, you want your ambulance service to help take care of people when they need it most. But you also want it to make as much money as possible.
It’s going to be awfully tough for your ambulance service to make any money if you don’t have the right billing tools on hand. This EMS billing company can set your business up with just about everything that you need to send out invoices, late notices, etc.
You’ll be in charge of staying on top of your billing practices and fine-tuning them so that your ambulance service can enjoy success. You can do it by working side-by-side with the right billing company at all times.
Make Sure You Have These Things for Your Ambulance Service
At first, starting an ambulance service from scratch might seem simple enough. What more could you possibly need outside of a couple of ambulances and a few EMTs?
But as you’ve seen here, there is more to the ambulance service business than meets the eye. There are so many essential items that you’ll want to invest in for your business to turn it into a success.
Would you like to get your hands on other tips that will help take your ambulance service to the next level? Find them by poking around on the rest of our blog.
