New ambulance contract expected to increase Lutheran ED volumes
Intermountain Health/Platte Valley Ambulance has signed a contract to provide ambulance services to the City of Golden, Golden Gate Canyon Fire Protection District and unincorporated Pleasant View, starting Tuesday, Sept. 1.
The coverage area spans more than 60 square miles of territory in Jefferson County, from Coal Creek Canyon in the north to Clear Creek Canyon in the south, and from CO-93 in the east to the Gilpin County line in the west.
This represents nearly 10,000 households and about 175 miles of roads, mostly in Golden.
“Golden is in Lutheran’s backyard, and Golden residents see Lutheran as their hospital,” said Tim Penic, Intermountain’s clinical operations manager for ground medical transport. “Our approach with this partnership will be to keep these patients in their community by sending them to Lutheran for the highest-quality care they need, as often as possible.”
Currently, Lutheran receives about 800 emergency transports via Golden EMS per year, out of a total of about 3,500. That’s 22 percent. Penic believes this new partnership will boost Lutheran’s share of this business to at least 50 percent of all Golden EMS transports.
“We are excited about the Golden EMS partnership and we’re looking forward to more growth opportunities,” said Dave Leventhal, MD, medical director for Lutheran’s Emergency Department. “We have been revamping our front-end flow processes during the last six weeks and we’ll watch closely for changes to our volumes once the partnership rolls out.”
According to Penic, there are benefits to both the Intermountain and Golden EMS crews as well. They will cohabitate, train together and build a more seamless transfer of care, for a safer and more efficient process.
“We believe cohabitating optimizes collaboration, and it was evident Golden agreed and was interested in the type of partnership we were offering,” said Penic. “Also, Platte Valley Ambulance has an excellent reputation, so Intermountain is a known and respected player in this space.”
Platte Valley Ambulance is the largest EMS provider in Intermountain and its only one in Colorado, already deploying seven ambulances to serve Adams and Weld counties along the Front Range. This expansion to Jefferson County will add three additional ambulances. All will operate 24/7.
The recent join venture announcement between Intermountain and AdventHealth will not affect this agreement. Physicians with questions about the partnership and the growth opportunities it provides can contact Penic via email.